We have been learning about how music can help to tell a story and this week we focused on cartoons and Disney animated films.

We started by working in pairs to ‘write the room’ where we had to look for pictures of a range of cartoons and Disney animated films and copy the rhythms displayed onto our record pages.  Then we worked together to clap each of the rhythms which included quarter notes, quarter rests, eighth notes and minims.

Then we did a listen and appraise activity where we listened to four Disney songs and rated them on a scale of 1 to 3 stars. We had to consider how well the songs helped to tell the story and also what we thought about the songs. We all agreed that Disney songs are very powerful in telling stories.

We have started a unit of work where we are learning about the connection between literacy and music and how music can help tell a story.

We have listened to a folk ballad, a traditional song from Shetland and two classical pieces, all of which tell very different stories.

The latest piece we listening to was ‘In The Hall Of The Mountain King’ by the Norwegian composer, Edvard Grieg. After hearing a summary of the story, we listened to the piece played by an orchestra and then on our whiteboards we drew a picture to show what the music made us think of.

Below are some photos of the class hard at work creating their drawings and also some of the final pictures they produced and shared with their classmates.

Today P4 took part in the Primary Music Festival at Mareel where they performed two songs to a packed auditorium, including an adjudicator! Their singing was fantastic and they represented Sound School brilliantly.

We await written feedback of our performance and I will share that in due course but needless to say, Miss Stewart is very proud of all the children in P4 today!

Here’s a video of our performance taken by Mrs Williamson.