A Class Act
by Marilyn Chaseling
Longman

A Class Act is a series of books and CDs providing teachers with an extensive range of Music and related Arts activities for students.

• They are accessible documents for both classroom and specialist music teachers, providing step by step instructions.
• They are developmental. The books explore the elements of music and develop them logically and thoroughly through a range of activities.
• The CDs have a comprehensive range of songs with pleasant accompaniments which have been chosen for their accessibility to students and their capacity for exploring particular musical elements. The CDs make the task of teaching songs and associated activities an easy and enjoyable one.
• The themes chosen by the author have great breadth and are those which teachers would use at these levels across all KLAs.
• There are a range of cross arts activities which supplement the music activities and encourage teachers to use this material as a natural part of their total program.
• An enormous amount of work has gone in to sequencing the material and devising an accessible approach to music in these books.

A Class Act claims to work towards achieving the learning outcomes of the National Profiles. In some respects they do, and the author has spent a great deal of time in charting exactly the kinds of knowledge students will gain from these activities.

With respect, A Class Act is skill acquisition and performance based. Most of the activities are based around learning songs and learning how the elements function in these songs so that they can be performed with accompaniments. There are few activities encouraging students to make their own music, or listen and respond to the wealth of music the world has on offer, or to understand music's role in the world. In essence, the balance is not there.