Teaching Strategies and Approaches
Exploring sound
Provide learners with opportunities to explore sounds created by voice, body, instruments and objects through child-led and adult directed group music activities. See strategies and approaches for EXA 2-17a.
Following performance directions
- Agree signals (and use visuals) for start/stop, louder/quieter, faster/slower and give the children opportunities to practise following 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, crescendo/diminuendo).
- Support children to create graphic scores using simple shapes/symbols/pictures to represent sounds they created for a soundscape or sound story. An adult or child can lead the performance of a composition by pointing to different parts of the graphic score and everyone else follows their direction.
- Give children opportunities to apply their knowledge of notation by writing down simple rhythms that they create using stick notation.
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/quiet? How would you describe the atmosphere and why?
- 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 or film clip of an environment could also be used to stimulate the improvised soundscape.
- Ask learners to create and perform sounds to enhance the retelling of a story e.g. The Tortoise and the Hare or a well known Disney story. Children can work in pairs or small groups to create a sounds to match a characters and events in the story using a combination of voice, instruments, body percussion, objects and music technology (recorded sound effects).
- Groups can present the sounds they have created and should explain their choice of instrument/voice and use of tempo and dynamics etc., whilst other members of the class provide feedback.
- Provide opportunities for children to record compositions and perform sound stories/soundscapes to an audience.
End of Level Benchmarks
- Applies verbal and non-verbal techniques whilst giving and/or following performance directions, for example, eye contact and/or body language.
- Uses voice, instruments and technology to create music, experimenting with timbre, for example, uses tuned/untuned percussion instruments to create simple melodies and rhythms.
- Explains, with supporting reasons, what works well and what could be improved in their own and others’ work, using appropriate music vocabulary.
Interdisciplinary links
LIT 2-11a, LIT 2-02a, LIT 2-09a, ENG 2-19a, ENG 2-31a
HWB 2-01a, HWB 2-11a, HWB 2-14a
TCH 2-01a, TCH 2-10a
