Will Green Music

Nursery
Autumn 2016, Week 6
Finger rhymes and fine motor skills

The class walk into the Music Room wide eyed. While at school these children only leave the Nursery itself to eat lunch and to have music lessons. Some look a little wary. I am seated on a chair that is on the opposite side of the room to the door. I sing ‘Come and sit with me’. The children sit down all over the place. I hold up my fingers and stretch them all out straight. Being children quite a few simply copy me. I say the ‘Ten Little Soldiers’ rhyme several times.

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Year 2
Autumn Week 7
45 minutes
The Slentho
We start the lesson with the whole class seated on the floor in absolute silence. I gently hum E-G-EE-G. The class hum back and one or two hazard an attempt at singing it with their newly learned pitch names. I remind them of their ‘musical pencils’.
We did quite a lot of work towards the end of Year 1 showing the pitch with pretend ‘musical pencils’.

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Year 6
Autumn Term – Week 6
The Class Challenge

The group enter the room looking less than wholly enthusiastic (!) They settle down with an almost perfect split down the middle of the room between the boys and the girls. This is quite normal and it begins around Year 2 (aged 6/7 years old) which I think is remarkably early. I ask them if they have done that week’s Class Challenge*. They have done it! I say ‘Off you go’ and the whole class claps a 16 beat rhythm, that they’ve invented and memorised druing the week, while saying the rhythm names.

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Year 3
Autumn Week 5
Learning a new pitch-name!
The children pile into the room at 2.30 carrying their book bags and coats ready for home time. They all look like they are ready to go home themselves. Every teacher knows that the morning sessions are always more settled and that the ability to concentrate on adult-directed activities drifts away as the day progresses. This particular class find it hard to engage with a directed activity at any time of day.

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Year 5
26.09.16
Reinforce the Learning
This week the lesson takes place in the regular classroom of this class because the Music Room is being used for some P4C training http://www.philosophy4children.co.uk/. I kick off the lesson by reminding the class of their ‘Class Challenge’. I always give a small challenge to each class to practise something ready for the next lesson. Ideally they will have perfected it. I always keep a record of the classes that have done it or failed to do it.

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21.09.16

Reception

Dynamics: Calm and Lively!

This lesson is the first session of the year with this class. Most of the children were in the Nursery last year but not all. It’s supposed to be a thirty-minute session but it might last less than that. I just want to keep it light and fun. If the children leave the session smiling and they’ve moved around to the songs and listened to some songs and joined in a bit too then I’ll be happy.

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16.09.16

Year4
All On Board!
As so often I began by singing ‘Hello Everyone’ using some pitches that the class are familiar with; in this case I used the pitches ‘la’, ‘so’ and ‘mi’ (‘lsm’ or in note names A, G & E). There are three classes in each year group and the first time I did this lesson I made this activity too hard by singing difficult intervals; it was not a good way to open the lesson. It’s important to have something familiar and manageable to start with.

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05.09.16

Year 6
Always increasing the challenge!
It’s a new year and it’s the first day back. I need something immediately engaging and fun to do. How to make it engaging? Choose a song that’s easy to sing. How to make it fun? Include a bouncing ball in the accompanying activity. And so we begin our lesson with ‘I Like Coffee, I Like Tea’*. The buzzing energy of post-lunchbreak overexcitement and overheating (!) is quickly channelled into a focus on getting this game right.

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