The teacher revises/pre-teaches keywords, such as 'verse/chorus' and 'mood,' before students complete the listening guide.The teacher provides students with a listening guide, such as the one below.

The teacher plays the song, 'Gurrumul History (I was born blind),' to the class.This strategy precedes more explicit strategies which teach the language used to describe the elements of music.

Additionally, students begin to learn to respond to analytic questions about music. Through this strategy, students focus on how audiences make meaning from music, and on beginning to use language to express their aesthetic response to music. This strategy can be adapted to any listening situation. In the following strategy, Year 7 or 8 students experience the work of Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu and his acclaimed song 'Gurrumul History (I was born blind)' ( VCAMUR039). Students talk about the usefulness of the rhythm grid to visually deconstruct the rhythm into more manageable chunks: beats per bar and how it sits with the time signature. In this video, the teacher introduces new rhythmic vocabulary using a rhythm grid to support and scaffold his students to organise and write complex rhythms in traditional notation. Literacy in Practice Video: Music - Rhythmic Vocabulary In classroom settings, whole pieces or extracts can be played allowing the experience of 'surprising and varied,' 'colourful and unique' music (Burnard & Murphy, 2017). Students listen to a range of works in a variety of styles to increase their knowledge of music and their ability to play in diverse styles. What is being listened to is predominantly in the language of sounds, rather than the English language, and when lyrics are vocalised, their meanings change in relation to the song style, and the use of the elements of music, for example, melody and harmony. However, listening in a music classroom is quite a different skill to listening in other school settings. This, in turn, informs students' musical performances. In particular, the ability to analyse aural experiences allows students to understand musical style, aesthetics and affect. It forms the basis for understanding musical experiences.

'Listening underpins all music learning' ( VCAA, n.d., n.p.).

Aural learning style