Teaching Strategies and Approaches
Good listening skills
- Model and talk about how to be a good listener / audience member when listening to live or recorded performances e.g. use appropriate body language, look at the performer(s).
- Encourage learners to ask a question or make a comment after listening to a music performance, using sentence starters for support e.g. I heard… I liked…
Selecting music to listen to
- Select short excerpts of music (20-30 seconds) to listen to in order to sustain engagement.
- Talk to the children about when and where they hear music and ask them about the music that they/their families like to listen to.
- Select music from a range of musical genres and styles, including styles and cultures that will be familiar to the children and music which is ‘new’ to them and will expand their musical experiences e.g. Pop, Classical, Scottish, Latin American, Indian.
- Select music which will inspire different feelings, images or memories for the children e.g. pieces with a contrasting mood/atmosphere.
- Select music with clear contrasts in tempo, dynamics or instrumentation, repetitive melodies or rhythm patterns for the childrento identify and respond to.
Linking music to emotions
- Listen to a short excerpt and ask the children about how the music makes them feel or what they picture when they hear it. Anobject can be passed around the circle for children to share their responses, using visuals for different emotions to support. Listen to a contrasting piece of music, does this make them feel or picture something differently?
- A listening dice with symbols can be used to stimulate discussion after listening to the music e.g. talk about what they feel, picture in their head, hear, like/dislike and questions they have about the music.
- Learners could choose a favourite piece of music (music they listen to at home, music from film/TV or a simple song/rhyme) and give a short talk to the class, using sentence starters for support e.g. My favourite song/music is…I like it because…It makes me feel…
Identifying music concepts
- Ask questions before, during and after listening to a piece of music, which encourage children to listen closely and to begintoidentify some basic music concepts. The excerpt can be played multiple times and paused at different points to draw attention to particular features.
- Start by asking open-ended questions e.g. What did you notice? Have you heard any music like this before? Is the music the same all the way through?
- Ask questions related to basic music concepts e.g. Is the music fast or slow? Is it loud or quiet? What instrument can you hear at the beginning?
Responding in different ways
- Listen to music with a strong beat/pulse and ask the children to keep the beat along to the music using movement (e.g. marching), body percussion (e.g. clapping) or instruments (e.g. claves, drum).
- Give opportunities for children to respond to familiar and unfamiliar music using mark making or construction materials to create colours, lines, symbols, shapes or models which represent what they hear.
- Children can use facial expression to show how the music makes them feelor use their bodies to move around the space in response to the music.
End of Level Benchmarks
- Shares thoughts and feelings about music experiences such as live and/or recorded music, peer nursery rhyme performances, school concerts, giving reasons for likes and dislikes.
- Shares views and listens appropriately to the views of others, for example, states if the music is fast/slow or loud/quiet.
Interdisciplinary links
EXA 2-05a, EXA 2-09a, EXA 2-13a
LIT 0-02a / ENG 0-03a, LIT 0-04a, LIT 0-10a
HWB 0-11a, HWB 0-01a
