I have had a super year so far teaching P456. Throughout the session they have been exemplary at following our school rules in music (Ready, Respect and Safe) and because of this they have been an absolute pleasure to teach.

In Term 1 they delighted me with their huge variety of compositions for body percussion or instruments using a set structure. Pupils wrote their pieces out and recorded them and then had them evaluated by the class using 2 stars and a wish. In the final few lessons pupils played some Kodaly Singing Games and Rhymes and tried their hand at chair drumming – not as easy as it sounds!

Term 2 started with some fun activities to link in with Halloween and Bonfire Night. We played lots of Halloween music games and listened to ‘Fireworks’ by Igor Stravinsky. As I knew the class were such good singers I challenged them to try a very tricky song for the Christmas Concert and I’m sure everyone will agree that their performance of ‘Super Santa’ was outstanding. We couldn’t have done this without the assistance of Mrs Henderson and Mrs Smith.

Term 3 began by listening and appraising different versions of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ (from Jimi Hendrix to Dougie Maclean!). Pupils were encouraged to listen carefully and comment on musical features and also give their personal opinions on whether they liked each version or not and why. We also learnt a little about the history of the piece and the lyricist, Robert Burns. They then went on to learn about the pentatonic scale (using tuned percussion instruments) and worked in Co-operative Learning groups to compose their own pieces of music using this scale.

More recently they have been working on the Up Helly Aa songs for SMUHA and the pupils learnt to play some of the chords for ‘Jeemie the Jarl’ on ukulele.
In the last couple of weeks they evaluated each other’s other’s compositions and I am planning to do some Samba activities with them to end the term.