Teaching Strategies and Approaches
Exploring sound
Provide learners with opportunities to explore sounds created by voice, body, instruments and objects through child-led play and during adult-led group music activities. See strategies and approaches for EXA 0-17a
Following performance directions
- Agree signals (and use visuals) for start/stop, louder/quieter, faster/slower and give the children opportunities to practicefollowing a leader when making sound with their voices, body percussion, instruments or objects.
- Give children opportunities to lead others using simple signals as performance directions (e.g. gestures for start/stop or loud/quiet).
Responding to a stimulus
- Listen to live sounds in a local environment (e.g. park, playground, street) or a pre-recorded sounds from other environments (e.g. under the sea or thunderstorm) and prompt responses from the children by asking questions e.g. What sounds can you hear? Which sounds are loud? Which sounds are quiet?
- Use this as inspiration for the children to create a group soundscape using a combination of voices, instruments, body percussion and objects which reflects the chosen environment. Children can perform the improvised soundscape following a leader’s signals for when to start/stop or get louder/quieter.
- Similarly, an engaging and interesting image of the environment could also be used to stimulate the improvised soundscape.
- Ask learners to create and perform sounds to enhance the retelling of a well-known story e.g. The Gruffalo. Children can work in pairs or small groups to create a sound to match a character in the story using instruments, their voice, body percussion, an object, or a combination of these.
- Each group can present the sound they have created for their character and explain their choice of instrument or voice etc. whilst other members of the class can give some feedback. Ask children to perform their sounds during a retelling of the story, with each group performing a sound for their character when it appears.
End of Level Benchmarks
When communicating ideas and feelings through creative music activities:
- uses voice to explore sound and rhythm, for example, hums, whispers, sings;
- chooses different musical instruments to play such as chime bar, drum or body percussion, exploring sound and rhythm by, for example, clapping, tapping;
- uses technology to capture sound, for example, audio recorders, microphones, apps and other software.
Interdisciplinary links
LIT 0-01a / LIT 0-11a / LIT 0-20a
LIT 0-02a / ENG 0-03a
LIT 0-09b / LIT 0-31a
MNU 0-02a, MTH 0-13a
HWB 0-10a, HWB 0-11a, HWB 0-14a
HWB 0-21a, HWB 0-22a, HWB 0-23a
TCH 0-01a, TCH 0-10a
