ABC Online for Upper Primary

ABC Online for Year 5-6 / Primary 6-7
- A flexible set of child-centred creative music resources designed for older Primary children,
delivered through your whiteboard.
- Movies explain all activities and concepts, allowing you to learn with your class.
- Interactive activities allow your class to practice creative skills on-screen,
before composing and performing in small groups with handouts and classroom instruments.
- Save and print online traffic-light assessments, and download handouts and curricular planning sheets.
- Easy to use for ALL staff, even those who feel unconfident with music.
Read What does the Upper Primary 'Develop Music Skills' course offer?
The Upper Primary ‘Develop Music Skills’ course helps:
- Active listening skills, visual attention, gross and fine motor skills, language and social skills.
- A sense of rhythm and pitch, as well as instrumental and singing skills.
- Literacy and mathematical skills and concepts, through the use of symbols and numbers.
- Communication, confidence and emotional literacy, through discussion and peer-to-peer feedback.
Features:
- Revise the instrumental and creative skills explored earlier in the ABC Online programme.
- Help children follow a vocal development course- delivered by an experienced singing tutor through online videos.
- Help children compose and perform in small groups, using downloadable handouts and workbooks- with instructions as movies on-screen.
- Practice creative processes using on-screen interactives- then use handouts and classroom instruments in your small group creative work.
- Help children to compose in melody, chord and groove teams, with supportive workbooks and pitch sets telling you which chime bars to use.
- Compose with three beat bars, 2 bar ideas, and learn to use the tie icon to compose with long notes.
- Learn a performance piece using Ostinatos (a repeating musical pattern) performed on percussion and chime bars and tuned percussion.
- Develop your improvisation skills, using the voice, untuned and tuned percussion.
- Follow a powerful X-factor-style audition format- with groups performing as bands, with band names.
- Use auditions to drive rhythmic and instrumental skills development, turning children into experienced and confident performers.
- Complete self-reflective diaries on the creative process and performance.
Read What does the Upper Primary 'Topics and Cross-Curricular Activities' course offer?
‘Topics and Cross-Curricular Activities’ course features:
- Compose raps and songs about who you are, where you live, and what you like to do- with adaptable worksheets to allow you to compose raps about any topic.
- Use creative writing modules to explore rhyme schemes, lyric writing, and to develop lyrics about different topics.
- Learn songs about the environment (Beautiful World), and explore emotional literacy by writing new lyrics to songs about feeling down (The Blues), and missing someone who has left your life (I Carry You In My Heart). Perform the backing to songs using classroom percussion instruments.
- Use smart handouts with pick-boxes, word banks and rhyme zones to support lyric writing for children with a range of abilities.
- Follow stand-alone creative music topic modules on individual topics- with loads of cross-curricular links.
- Current topic modules include Make Xmas different, the Olympics, and new topic modules will be released throughout the session- modules in development include Percussion Grooves from Around The World, Elections/Referundum, Scots Language and Burns, World War II etc.
- Complete self-reflective diaries on the creative process and performance.


Click here for ABC Online for Lower Primary.
Click here for ABC Music for Middle Primary
Additional questions:
Read Do I need to do lots of preparation?
- 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 it out step-by-step.
Read What equipment do I need to teach this?
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 computer with an internet connection.
- An interactive whiteboard with connected speakers.