ABC Creative Music

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Year 2/P3 Pack - Contents Page
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Year 2/P3 Pack - Contents Page

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Sample Activity 1 - Hide & Seek:Cat & Mouse
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Sample Activity 1 - Hide & Seek:Cat & Mouse

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Sample Activity 2 - Tell the Difference - Hi/Lo/Same
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Sample Activity 2 - Tell the Difference - Hi/Lo/Same

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Sample Activity 3 - Plastic is Fantastic
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Sample Activity 3 - Plastic is Fantastic

In the Year 2/Primary 3 course, children:

• Explore further the musical concepts higher/lower/same (pitch) and fast and slow (tempo or speed).
• Explore a musical scale pictured on a staircase, learning to use their ears to find an animal character hiding behind one stair/one note of the scale- to develop finer pitch perception.
• Compose short sequences of music on untuned percussion and chime bars, performing them with a rhythmic count as a group.
• Conduct loud and soft sounds on percussion, and performing a song about loud and soft sounds.
• Compose longer sequences of percussion sounds with a more interesting structure.
• Explore materials: What sounds can you make with things made from plastic?
• Recognise different types of instruments and how they are played.
• Explore easy-to-use shape notation- to compose and play rhythms as a class- Square = 1 sound per beat, Circle = two sounds per beat.

Each resource pack contains more than enough material for a whole year of study.

Introductory Journeys at the start of all the courses after Reception/Primary 1 cover material from the previous pack. A rangefinder helps you work out where to start in the new session, to allow children to move smoothly through the programme.

Doing some preparation will help you deliver a better class, adapt activities to your themes and topics, and will make you feel more relaxed, especially if teaching ABC music is new for you.

But we know teachers are busy, so all the resources are written in simple language, with a clear layout. Lesson plans are laid out like a script- so if you need to, you can take a lesson plan, and say to children- “Let’s see what we have to do today!” and run the activity by reading out the script.

Everything you need should be in most classrooms. You need:

• A set of standard classroom instruments- tuned and untuned percussion- eg wood blocks, tambourines, shakers/maracas, chime bars, drums/tambours, xylophones/glockenspiels and beaters etc.
• A CD player- we recommend Coombers because they are nice and loud!

A More Detailed Description of the Year2/P3 Programme

The Yr2/P3 programme contains 3 intro journeys (which revise Year1/P2 material) and 7 journeys of new material, with 45 lesson plans.

A creative music programme brings a warm spontaneous atmosphere to your classroom, with fun but richly meaningful social interaction in all your music sessions.

Creativity is supported by a balance of choice and structure, embedded into the activity design. This helps teachers and guides children to produce clear musical outcomes that engage and excite, while leaving them with genuine creative decisions to make, with the resulting feeling of ownership and achievement.

What Skills & Concepts Will Children Learn- Brief Summary

The programme develops:

active listening skills, visual attention, gross and fine motor skills, language and social skills- and develops a sense of rhythm and pitch, as well as instrumental and singing skills.

The use of symbols and numbers develops literacy and mathematical skills and concepts.

Introduces the development of a finer sense of pitch and enables children to respond to a simple rhythm notation system using shapes. Shape notation is easy for non-specialist teachers and children to understand, and easily evolves into coventional rhythm notation. Through this, the more complex musical concepts of : one, two or ‘no’ sounds per beat are established. Pitch concepts – higher/lower/the same – and repetition are introduced and chidren begin to compose and perform with extra confidence. Start to recognise instrument types and explore materials using plastic. A fuller description of the programme will be posted shortly.

The Year2/P3 course progresses in small steps, but maintains throughout a focus on individual children making decisions, and other children listening to, understanding and acting on those decisions- whether using visual cues and symbols, or spoken or musical language.

This social process underpins the creative classroom, and is used to explore the creative use of simple musical fundamentals. Children become experienced in building simple but meaningful musical structures at a level right for them- using notation and sounds that are comfortable for them.