This week in music we explored the music programme “Charanga” (Charanga, 2016). I had heard of this programme before, as it was used in the school I was in on my first placement and I know the class teacher thought it was a great resource. However this was the first chance I had gotten to explore it myself.
It is a website with an incredible amount of online resources for music teachers, it provides them with everything to prepare a music lesson for any stage in the curriculum. There are full lesson plans, which follow a week by week programme making it easy for teachers to track the children’s progression. This is great support for new teachers or teachers who are not confident with music.
It has various interactive activities, sheet music which can be downloaded and printed out for many different instruments and backing tracks for songs. This is practical as the teacher does not have to accompany the children in singing lessons.
Within the vast bank of songs, there is music relating to other areas of the curriculum such as Times Table songs and numeracy songs. This is an interesting way of integrating music into the other curricular areas and it is a great way of engaging children in other subjects. Personally I find putting something into song helps me to remember it better, therefore with the likes of the timetables song, these activities could aid children who are struggling to remember them.
Charanga also has section dedicated to the BBC’s ten pieces programme (BBC, 2015) which I had not been familiar until now. The purpose of the 10 pieces programme is to introduce children to classical music in an exciting and engaging way by getting them to create their own response to the pieces through the arts, whether it be a composition of their own, a dance or digital art. Charanga provides a whole lesson plan and a tool kit full of activities for each of the 10 pieces. Again this is incredibly helpful for teachers who do not have an in-depth knowledge on classical music but would still like their class to take part in this interesting programme.
Overall I thought that charanga was a great resource for all teachers, no matter what their music ability and it is definitely something that I would consider using in the future. I hope that programmes like this encourage teachers who are not confident in music to give these preprepared lessons a try, and allow more music into the classroom.
References
BBC (2015) 10 Pieces. [Online] Available: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01vs08w [Accessed 6 January]
Charanga (2016) Charanga music school. [Online] Available at: http://www.charangascotland.co.uk [Accessed 3 January 2017].
