School Visits - McClelland College – 03/05/10

McClelland College is located in Frankston, Victoria and is one of the pilot schools introducing Musical Futures. There are 1000 students enrolled at the school with 150 students learning an instrument through the instrumental music program. The school employs 8 teachers to deliver the instrumental music program.

At the school, the Year 7’s and 9’s learn classroom music. Until this last year, the school had a limited number of resources in which to deliver classroom music.

McClelland College over the past 12 months has invested a large amount of money in the music department with new buildings, rooms as well as musical equipment and computers.

The music facility consists of 2 main rooms used for classroom music (one being a computer lab), 4 practice rooms and a number of small storage spaces. The department is being managed by Andrew Moffat.

When visiting the school today, Andrew had a year 7 class consisting of 24 students. Each student was working on PC’s in the computer lab. Students were learning how to play keyboards as a whole class in preparation for a performance.

The year 9’s at the school are focusing on the “Informal” component of Musical Futures. In particular “ In the Deep End”. For this project, students divide into friendship groups and learn how to play a contemporary rock song together as a group.

Andrew was very pleased with how the project so far has been introduced. He has mentioned that one of the most effective values of the program is the informal component. Letting students figure it out for themselves being a very powerful way of learning.

Andrew identified some issues with needing more equipment and after consultation with Ken Owen, the schools order of equipment should be delivered in the next fortnight.