Our most recent workshop with Anna was all about music. Music is a subject which I did not really enjoy in school but I would love in my free time. I have a burning passion for musical theatre and the art of performance is something that I love. The picture above shows me playing Velma Von Tussle in Hairspray in 2012 which I enjoyed so much.

We learnt a lot in Anna’s workshop which I did not know about as my knowledge of music is fairly limited. However, what we were shown was that music and maths walk hand in hand to make the music enjoyable.

The link between maths and music is so important and in this workshop we were shown many different ways where we use maths in this creative subject. One activity we did was clapping to a beat. One person in the group clapped a basic beat while the rest of the group were split into four groups. We were to listen to the beat that the student was clapping while looking at a line on the board and clapping when it was yellow. For this we really had to concentrate and listen to the beat to ensure we did not ruin the sound. But, most importantly, we had to count up to 8 which was not difficult for us but this could be a tricky challenge for young children.

I feel like this is a very good activity to do with school pupils and I will definitely use it when teaching music to my classes. It will be good for pupils of any age in primary school as it allows them to understand the importance of keeping a rhythm. In the early stages of school this will help pupils with their counting as it can be done out loud and also allow them to understand basic rhythm, while the older pupils can use this is a warm up activity to remind them of the importance of keeping a beat and rhythm.

We also had fun in this workshop by getting to use the xylophones and glockenspiels and I feel that having a practical element to the lesson was essential as some of the things we were taught were confusing but being able to apply what we were taught to a fun activity made it a lot more understandable and fun.

Music is a good point to look at to see Ma’s idea of longitudinal coherence in practice. This is when the teacher knows that their pupils have a good understanding of the current subject that they’re learning about. I think this links in well with applying mathematics to music lessons as the teacher can ask the children to count or use their timetables when making a beat.

Therefore, I think that music and maths work perfectly together and the use of maths in this context allows us to have a much sounder of music and the theory behind it.