ABC and the New National Curriculum

ABC Creative Music’s programme meets the aims of the
2014 Music National Curriculum at KS1 and KS2

“To engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians,

 

and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement.” NC 2014

  • ABC brings a genuine creative music-making culture into your classroom.
  • Places decision-making and performance at the heart of children’s musical experiences.
  • Ensuring engagement, enjoyment, and a real sense of ownership and achievement in all.

“Understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated.”

  • Innovative approaches to improvisation and composition help your children become experienced at creating and performing their own music, and listening to and assessing the music of others.

“Develop an understanding of musical composition, organising and manipulating ideas

within musical structures.”

  • As well as performing lots of pre-composed songs and music, your class will learn the way music is structured through repeated creative experiences in structuring and building their own music.
  • Smart activity designs and on-screen composition grids give your children confidence and creative skills, which they then use to compose on handouts in small groups.
  • The design of the activities, grids and handouts guarantee clear and rewarding performance outcomes, making it easy for you the teacher and satisfying for your children- while giving a real practical education in music-making.
  • “I choose the sequence of icons, I can perform and hear the sequence of sounds, I can hear and see others performing and listening to my sequence of sounds.”

“Including the inter-related dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations”

  • From Reception onwards your children will learn to identify and name, then create and perform with a progressive sequence of age-appropriate sounds- exploring musical concepts from the inter-related dimensions of music: high/low (pitch), loud/soft (dynamics), long/short (duration), fast/slow (tempo) and structural elements of numbers of sounds, sequence, repetition and phrase structure- before exploring composition and performance with different instrumental sounds, rhythms, pitch and lyrics.

“Pupils should be taught to sing and play musically with increasing confidence and control.”

  • As your children’s music-making evolves, smart support for group creativity and rehearsal helps drive focus, engagement and instrumental and vocal skill development, through the use of structured auditions, peer feedback, rehearsal timers.
  • Everything you need is supplied on screen, to allow you to run clear progressive activities.
  • Tuition on percussion and singing technique, with activities to develop pitch perception are delivered through the whiteboard, allowing non-specialists to learn with their class.

“Perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians.”

  • The ABC programme gives you lots of fun original songs- performed by leading musicians and singers from the UK’s folk, jazz and classical scene, expressing musical styles from many traditions around the world, including Jazz, Folk, Blues, Classical, African, Indian, Afro-Cuban, Pop, Rock, and Hip-Hop.
  • There is in-depth musical material on Afro-Cuban music and the Clave rhythm, Ghanaian drumming on and dancing, Indian music and the Tabla, and the Scottish Jig.- with cross-curricular links- and modules helping children listen to music from different musicians and musical traditions on iTunes, and downloading the music to burn their own listening CDs.
  • In Upper Primary, your children can compose their own rap to a hip-hop beat- exploring rhymes and syllable-structure, and explore the history of the Blues, before composing their own lyrics to a Blues, to explore emotional literacy.

“Use technology appropriately…”

  • The major principles and approaches are introduced on whiteboards, with activity flowing out from the screen to music-making in the room, so your role is more of a facilitator and co-learner along with your class.
  • The screen supports and engages children in establishing skills and concepts before facilitating a social music making in the room with real instruments.

Use of appropriate musical notations.”

  • From Year 2, the resource uses shape notation to notate rhythm- which allows all children and teachers to quickly start composing, notating and performing, without spending a long time struggling with a difficult notation system.
  • Once children gain a lot of experience creating and performing, more confident class teachers and specialists can use the range of notations available in the ABC programme, to move between shape notation and the stave, to provide the right blend of practical engagement and enjoyment and challenge for each group.

Our Goals

We are a small company producing fun, easy-to-use resources, but we are very serious about genuinely creative music education, and care deeply about spreading the positive impact it can have on brain development, musical, social and general educational attainment, and a child’s relationship with learning and school.

See your children’s response to the ABC approach by signing up for a free trial course- here.

To find out more about ABC Online- hear some music, see lesson plans and testimonials, click here.

If you have any enquiries concerning ABC Creative Music and how it might be used in your school,
then please call us on 0131 510 0099 or 07974 983701.Or email us at info@abccreativemusic.com.

Best Wishes
Tom & Phil Bancroft

Founders of ABC Creative Music