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.
It has quavers (ti-ti) and crotchets (ta). They do it quite well and nearly everyone joins in.
Next I switch on the backing track to Mary Mack**. This is a lovely traditional Scottish Gaelic song and its two parts fit together very neatly. These children have been singing it since they were in Year 4. They begin singing straight away and by the end they are doing so with some enthusiasm, though by no means lots of enthusiasm! I split the class so that it can be sung in two parts. Now they are enjoying the challenge more and it’s starting to sound good. We finish by singing along with the cheerful backing track until it stops at which point both groups continue to sing in the two parts. There is a sense of accomplishment by the end of this.
The class then make a circle and I introduce a straightforward warm up/focus game called Concentration Navigation. With a repeating 4-beat pat/clap/click/click action the class sing the words ‘concentration navigation’ and then there are 4 rests. In this space someone says their own name and then someone else’s name. To make it more competitive people are ‘out’ if they mess up the words or the actions or if they stop singing! For some, this sort of gaming makes it more exciting.
By the end of this activity – never done by this class before – the concentration levels are pretty high. I immediately start singing Fun Mje Alafia***, a traditional Yoruba song from Nigeria. For some reason it really captures the interest of one boy in the class (from a Ghanaian family) especially when I introduce some actions. These actions, as I do them, are hands out to the right and then patting the legs and then hands out to the left and then hands up to make a big circle. However by the time this boy is doing them they have become far more intense and somehow more African-looking. He is absolutely loving it and this makes lots of the other boys begin joining in with gusto. By this point they have pretty much taken over the lesson. They step up to the front of the class and perform the song for the rest of the class! There is much laughter and hilarity.
This particular song fits together with ‘The Canoe Song’ that they have been singing for a while. We don’t attempt to put them together today because it’s too soon. Nonetheless we do sing the Canoe Song and perform it as a canon. It sounds excellent as the class are in full voice now after Fun Mje Alafia. I explain to the class that their Class Challenge this week is to sing this song as a canon. To do this in class without me is going to involve some coordination and the class teacher will have to be engaged with it too.
Finally we take it down a notch by singing a beautiful song called ‘Maranoa Lullaby’****; it is apparently an Aborigine melody, certainly it is pentatonic. The class can see the song written out on the stave. The Class Challenge a few weeks ago had been to memorise this simple melody and to sing it with pitch names and hand signs. Today, with the lovely piano accompaniment it makes a peaceful end to a really enjoyable lesson.
*I always set a challenge for the class to have a go at during the week between the Music Lessons; most classes do these most of the time
**You can find this song on the Sing Up website www.singup.org
*** From Jo McNally’s excellent Young Voiceworks (32 Songs for Young Singers) book
****From the book ‘3-4-5’ published by the National Youth Choir of Scotland