Music

“In primary schools, one in every three girls was participating in extra-curricular music, compared with one in every seven boys. In secondary schools, only 6% of students with disabilities or special educational needs were involved in additional instrumental or vocal tuition, compared to 14% of students without these needs” (Ofsted, 2012).

This week in music we were back in the Mac lab. We were exploring the programme “Charanga” (Charanga, 2016). Charanga is an interactive and informative website resource that benefits both the teacher and the pupil. There are endless numbers of activities and worksheets that can help the children develop their music skills and knowledge.

There are pages that suit every level of the primary school which is extremely beneficial for progression, and a huge variety of song style that could be suited to topics and other curricular areas. We looked at Mamma Mia sheet music, sang the song as a class, then explored the various activities individually.

The reason why I liked this programme so much was that it provided assistance and lesson plans for the teacher. This is particularly helpful for me as I have a limited knowledge of music, so some assistance and inspiration is extremely useful.

For me, I feel like I learned a lot from this programme and that technology plays such an important role in the classroom in the present day and offers endless learning opportunities.

Art

“So the relationship between the two volumes is a balance between the educational need for continuity… and the recognition that these children may still be working at a level more appropriate to younger children, particularly if they have not been introduced to this way of thinking about art before” (Start magazine – teaching art in primary schools, no date).

Today’s art workshop was heavily inspired by the famous tenements painting by the Glaswegian artist Avril Paton. Her painting called “Windows in the West” shows the intimate lives of those living in tenement housing across from her flat in Glasgow.

(Glasgow Museums, 2011)

The stimulus for the workshop was to take inspiration from the painting and photographs of tenement houses. We then, using polystyrene, designed our own outline of a tenement building before using the template to print on paper.

 

We rolled coloured ink onto coloured paper of our choice, before printing and lifting the design leaving a mono-print picture.

I thoroughly enjoyed this workshop and also learned about the history of Glasgow, the artist Avril Paton and using the media for printing. I feel that this is a simple, fairly quick activity that could be integrated with various other curricular areas.

Ofsted (2012) Music in schools: Wider still, and wider. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/music-in-schools (Accessed: 16 December 2016).

Start magazine – teaching art in primary schools (no date) Available at: http://www.arteducation.co.uk/art_books.html (Accessed: 16 December 2016).

Glasgow Museums (2011) Avril Paton on ‘windows in the west’ at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and museum, Glasgow. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVDRL6wsQYU (Accessed: 17 December 2016).

Charanga (2016) Primary music curriculum, secondary & instrumental music. Available at: http://charanga.com/site/ (Accessed: 21 December 2016).