What are your memories of music lessons at school? For many of us, getting to experiment with instruments for an hour felt like gleeful abandon next to the theory. That’s not to denigrate the subject’s academic value, but the practical elements have always been a crucial part of instilling a love of music learning.

So, when the pandemic meant that students returned to school in September without access to instruments, many music departments were forced to change their approach. But how would students respond to a curriculum based mostly on theory?

One head of music, Wendy Stevens, tells Tes how she found inspiration in this seismic shift in teaching. She explains how a focus on high-level theory has changed the shape of her department’s key stage 3 lessons for good.

Tes: What were KS3 music lessons previously like at your school?

Wendy Stevens: The intent of our KS3 music curriculum was always to provide our students with opportunities to make music. For each half-termly topic, they would have an initial context and/or theory lesson before being divided up into (teacher-directed) groups to make music in practice rooms.

This meant that most lessons started with a whole-class practical activity before the students were released to work in their groups by themselves. The teacher would visit each group, providing verbal feedback that was recorded and uploaded to the school VLE [virtual learning environment] for the students to refer back to.

But Covid meant that things had to change. What happened in September 2020?

When we returned to school, the system had totally changed and, in the interests of minimising student movement, we were no longer able to teach KS3 lessons in the music classrooms (all lessons were taking place in the main school building in class bubbles). Consequently, we had no access to instruments. All windows and doors needed to be kept fully open for ventilation, meaning that any sound from classrooms would be immediately broadcast into other rooms nearby.

Our immediate reaction was panic: what were we going to do? Surely this would decimate our subject? But, after some heated discussions and a lot of soul searching, we decided to embrace the situation and completely rewrite our KS3 curriculum up to Easter 2021.

So, what does the new curriculum look like?

Year 7 started their secondary music curriculum with a wholly theory-based module on how to read music, which led into studying the musical elements, with a lot of listening and appraising. Next up are the instruments of the orchestra and programme music, taking us up to the Easter holidays.

Year 8 and Year 9 are focusing on alternating periods of music history and completely new topics, such as the music industry (taking inspiration from the Btec Unit 1 module) and creating a music radio show. All of these topics are designed to be more theory- and listening-based than any of our previous schemes of learning.

And how have students responded to the changes?

We received absolutely no complaints about not being able to use the instruments; in fact, the students really seemed to be embracing the more challenging content being covered. They seemed to be no longer viewing music as the subject where they would just complete practical work on the instruments each lesson. Instead, they were now taking our assessments seriously, asking for revision criteria and practice questions.

And what has it been like for staff?

The change was daunting; we no longer had our instruments to hide behind and we had our work cut out in terms of planning. But rewriting our schemes of learning provided us with the opportunity to go back to the basics. We had to preemptively explore common student misconceptions and decide how these would go on to inform our key assessments.

It also forced us to re-evaluate our own pedagogical practice within the classroom and we started to implement Rosenshine’s principles of instruction on a much more methodical level (prior to this, we relied heavily on modelling and scaffolding). Recall activities and checking-for-student-understanding practices are fully embedded into each and every lesson, and our department’s questioning repertoire has increased extensively.

And have these developments had an impact on the learning taking place?

The benefits have been numerous. Year 7 can now analyse a piece of written music without needing note names or beats of the bar being written out for them. They can also aurally appraise a musical extract according to the musical elements and complete simple rhythmic dictation exercises (something that even Year 10 and 11 students in the past might have struggled to do).

Years 8 and 9 now have a broader and deeper understanding of music as a whole, and their understanding of the musical elements is also far more secure. Again, their aural appraisal skills are improving and Year 9 students are even asking to learn more challenging concepts such as modulations (something I’ve never come across before in seven years of teaching in three very different schools).

Has this changed what music provision at the school will look like in future?

Once we’re back in the music classrooms full-time, we have decided to review our KS3 curriculum again. Some may call us gluttons for punishment but we see it as an opportunity to ensure our fully inclusive curriculum provides intellectual challenge, develops musical creativity and curiosity and empowers our students to articulate their musical thinking confidently.

We intend to reintroduce many of our practical performance topics, embracing music of different cultures and heritages, but will now interweave them with some of the more theory- and listening-based topics from this year. We are hopeful that better weather in the summer term will allow us to move outside so that we do not have to disturb other classes while making music with our voices and/or instruments.

We don’t want to lose our performance focus - this is still an integral part of being a musician - but we have been reminded of the benefits of focusing solely on music theory and aural appraisal rather than just expecting our students to pick up these skills along the way.

Outside of the classroom, we are hoping that, as students will be more confident music readers, we will see even larger numbers at our extensive array of extracurricular clubs, and that a range of more challenging repertoire will be within the grasp of these ensembles.

Ultimately, by interweaving more theory- and listening-based topics with our practical topics, we hope to develop young musicians who understand music at a deeper level and develop a lifelong love for the subject.

Wendy Stevens is head of music at a secondary school in Surrey

This article originally appeared in the 5 March 2021 issue under the headline “How I… Teach music without instruments”