Key Stage 2 Music Spring 1
Once again Toftwood enjoyed a fabulous ‘Sign to Sing’ day learning how to sing and perform (using British sign language BSL) “Reach for the stars” by S Club 7. The children took part to show awareness of sign language and how it is seen as a language in itself. They practised very hard for 3 weeks, please see the link below to watch their performance.
In Year 3 we have continued to develop our ukulele playing skills, experimenting with different strumming patterns and beginning to change between chords. The children now find the first few songs we learned easy and fun to play and perform them with great enthusiasm!
The children in Year 4 have begun using the New Model Curriculum supported by the charanga. We have explored songs including ‘Hoedown’ and ‘I’m always there’. While learning to sing the songs and accompany them on recorder and glockenspiel, we have looked at how the notes can be written using standard notation. We have used some of the notes from the pieces to perform our own improvised melodies.
Year 5. We have been looking at Jazz and the concept of improvising around a melody. Children have concentrated on two pieces which exemplify how simple sequences of notes can form the basis of improvisation and getting the hang of the difference between ‘playing straight’ and ‘swing’.
Key Stage 2 Music Spring 2
Mr Hardy was like a kid on Christmas morning as he took delivery of 25 brand new, soprano glockenspiels to replace and add to our existing instruments. It is so great for every child to be able to use an instrument throughout the lesson.
In Year 3 the ukulele skills are growing all the time. Children loved playing the song ‘Dr Knickerbocker’ and were having so much fun that they didn’t notice that they had learned to play while standing (and moving), keep a rhythm and change between chords while singing!! We increased our repertoire of chords adding G7 (tricky as it uses 3 fingers on the fretboard). This is a bit of an ‘open sesame’ moment as with C, F and G7 hundreds of songs are possible and children ended the term using them to learn to play ‘3 Little Birds’.
We have been using the website Charanga to learn to sing new songs, including ‘Looking in the Mirror’ and ‘Take Time in Life’. When reading the sheet music to the songs, we have noticed the note lengths for a minim, crotchet and quaver and we have also noticed the symbols for some of the rests (a pause in the music). We have learned to play the instrumental sections by playing the metal glockenspiel. We have also learned how to compose our own sections of music, by using the same notes from the original score but in our own unique order.
This half-term, Year 5 have listened and responded to a variety of old school hip-hop songs. For each song, we tried to recognise the instruments and voices that we heard. We also tried to recognise the tempo, dynamics and whether the song had a hook. The children enjoyed performing the Fresh Prince of Bel Air and accompanied this rap by playing recorders and glockenspiels.
In Year 6 we learned the song ‘You’ve Got A Friend’ by Carole King from the album, ‘Tapestry’ for which she won four Grammy Awards, one of the most successful albums by a female artist. Hopefully an inspiration for any of our budding young songwriters. In addition to all the musical learning involved in learning to sing and accompany quite a challenging song, this very emotional piece gave us a chance to think about what friendship meant to us and see how we could bring those feelings to our performance.
Finally, fancy a little Easter Puzzle?
Mr Hardy has composed this tune (you’ll notice it’s a waltz in 3/4 time) however it contains a secret message can you ‘crack’ it?
