On Tuesday 14 of November, students in Year 12 Music had the opportunity to engage in an exciting activity, which aimed to develop their skills in presenting a ‘viva voce’, in preparation for their upcoming assessment. The students were introduced to this activity as ‘speed dating’. They each had 10 minutes to analyse the composition they had been working on, with reference to two musical concepts.
Then, the room was rearranged to create three tables for two. Three students were picked to stay at the tables (the ‘stayers’), and the other three (the ‘dates’) were assigned to their starting person. The date began. The highest courtesy was expected from the stayers - they pulled out a chair for their date, greeted them kindly, and asked about their day. With the formalities over, the stayers had three minutes to present about their composition, then the dates had two minutes to ask questions about it, to get to know their date. After a time of discussion, the two would swap roles and repeat the process.
By the end of the date, the couples had got to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses quite well, and they were tasked to ‘rate their date’, involving giving their date a line of positive feedback, and a rating of one to ten based on how well they presented their composition, and how well they asked questions. Then, the dates moved to a different table, and the dating continued until the stayers had seen all of the dates. At the end, the teacher collated all of the scores and feedback and wrote the rankings on the board, dubbing the highest scorer The Bachelor(ette) of Year 12! Through this activity, students worked on the skill of presenting their ideas succinctly, and the skill of giving and receiving feedback effectively.
Mr Jack Hollis
Music Faculty