ABC Online for Lower Primary

ABC Online for Reception / Primary 1

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A fun, child-centred creative music course, with progressive activities.
Save and print online traffic-light assessments, and download curricular planning sheets.
Class focus moves from the screen, to interacting with each other in social music-making.
Easy to use for ALL staff, even those who feel unconfident with music.

[dropdown_box expand_text=”What does the Reception/P1 course cover?” show_more=”Read” show_less=”Hide: ” start=”hide”]

The course develops:

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.

Children explore :

Sound and silence, numbers of sounds,
Beats and bars, working with a rhythmic count.
A basic set of percussion instruments and their sounds, with associated symbols.
The sounds you can make with paper.

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[dropdown_box expand_text=”Can I see a lesson plan from the Reception/P1 course?” show_more=”Show” show_less=”To hide” start=”hide”]

Click on links below for pop-up sample pages.

[popup heading=”Rec/P1: ‘Monster Steps, Butterfly Dance’ Lesson Plan- Click twice on page below to enlarge.” popup_link=”Rec/P1: ‘Monster Steps, Butterfly Dance’ Online Lesson Plan” class=””] [/popup]

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ABC Online for Year 1 / Primary 2

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A fun, child-centred creative music course, with progressive activities.
Save and print online traffic-light assessments, and download curricular planning sheets.
Class focus moves from the screen, to interacting with each other in social music-making.
Easy to use for ALL staff, even those who feel unconfident with music.

[dropdown_box expand_text=”What does the Yr1/P2 course cover?” show_more=”Read” show_less=”Hide: ” start=”hide”]

The programme develops:

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.

Children explore :

The musical concepts loud and soft, high and low (pitch) and fast and slow (tempo or speed).
Performing with beats and bars at different speeds.
A wider range of classroom percussion and a new set of percussion symbols.
Composing and performing with chime bars and tuned percussion.

For a fuller description of the programme read the detailed section at bottom.

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[dropdown_box expand_text=”Can I see a lesson plan from the Yr1/P2 course?” show_more=”Show” show_less=”To hide” start=”hide”]

Click on links below for pop-up sample pages.

[popup heading=”Yr1/P2: ‘The Shake Tap Ting Scrape Boom Song’ Lesson Plan- Click twice on page below to enlarge.” popup_link=”Yr1/P2: ‘The Shake Tap Ting Scrape Boom Song’ Online Lesson Plan” class=””] [/popup]

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[dropdown_box expand_text=”Can I hear some music from the Year 1/P2 course?” show_more=”Show” show_less=”To hide” start=”hide”]

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ABC Online for Year 2 / Primary 3

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A fun, child-centred creative music course, with progressive activities.
Save and print online traffic-light assessments, and download curricular planning sheets.
Class focus moves from the screen, to interacting with each other in social music-making.
Easy to use for ALL staff, even those who feel unconfident with music.

[dropdown_box expand_text=”What does the Yr 2/P3 course cover?” show_more=”Read” show_less=”Hide: ” start=”hide”]

The ABC programme develops:

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.

ABC Music for Year 2/P3 helps children:

Explore further the musical concepts higher/lower/same (pitch) and fast and slow (tempo or speed).
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 complex structure.
Explore materials: What sounds can you make with things made from plastic?
Recognise different types of instruments and how they are played.

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[dropdown_box expand_text=”Can I see a lesson plan from Yr 2/P3?” show_more=”Show” show_less=”To hide” start=”hide”]

Click on links below for pop-up sample pages.

[popup heading=”Yr2/P3: ‘Percussion Pick A Number- 1 to 4’ Lesson Plan- Click twice on page below to enlarge.” popup_link=”Yr2/P3: ‘Percussion Pick A Number- 1 to 4’ Online Lesson Plan” class=””] [/popup]

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Click here for ABC Online for Middle Primary

Click here for ABC Music for Upper Primary

Additional questions:

[dropdown_box expand_text=”How much teaching material is in each course?” show_more=”Read” show_less=”Hide: ” start=”hide”]

Each Online course contains enough material for a whole year of study in a mainstream class.

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[dropdown_box expand_text=”What happens next session?” show_more=”Read” show_less=”Hide: ” start=”hide”]

3 Intro Journeys at the start of each course, (except Rec/P1), review material from the previous one.
A rangefinder tells you where to begin teaching in the new session, for classes who didn’t complete the previous course, or who are new to ABC.
This allows children to move smoothly through the programme.
When starting ABC for the first time, begin teaching at Intro Journey 1 for your year group.

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[dropdown_box expand_text=”Do I need to do lots of preparation?” show_more=”Read” show_less=”Hide: ” start=”hide”]

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.

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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.

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[dropdown_box expand_text=”Detailed overview of the Reception/P1 course…” show_more=”Read” show_less=”Hide” start=”hide”]

Reception / Primary 1 Course: Detailed Description

Children enjoy starting with fun movement, listening and imagination activities, with the Boing Song and Monster Steps and Butterfly Dance quickly becoming firm favourites they will ask for over and over- and singing simple songs with actions. From the start children begin to choose and make decisions- eg ‘What movement will we do with the Boing today?’.

The drama of “Who is going to choose next?”, and “What are they going to choose?” makes sessions enjoyable and interesting, as you and the children learn more about each other.

Children learn left from right with a favourite funky song- initially using coloured stickers on their hands- red for right and blue for left.

They learn a song about counting to four, and soon are clapping or stomping with the one, two, three or four- practical learning about beats and bars. Quickly they are choosing which action to do, on which beat.

Children explore sound and silence with voice, body and percussion instruments- with children learning a simple conducting technique to lead the class, fantastic for boys with attention problems- “I want you to pay attention to me!” Developing a genuine culture of silence in a classroom has benefits across the curriculum.

Children explore numbers of sounds- one two three or four- learning to recognise what numerals look like, what different numbers of sounds ‘sound like’, and practice copying different numbers of sounds on voice and percussion. They then start to choose and perform different numbers of sounds with voice, body and percussion instruments, and control the movement of others by playing different numbers of sounds, through a variety of activities and songs.

Children explore sound and symbols- learning to make a single animal noise with a point at an animal symbol- and then start to build phrases with animal noises- making their own animal noise compositions with icons and the AB grid teaching aid. They explore the use of repetition of short sequences to build phrases, the most fundamental process in creating meaning in music- in the easy-to-use but powerful format of the AB Grid.

Children learn about different percussion instruments- drums, shakers, bells and tambourines: What the instruments are called and how to play them. They learn to recognise the sound of each type of instrument, and learn to control and conduct performance using symbols.

They then compose with percussion sounds on the AB Grid using icons- performing to a point conducted by the teacher, or sometimes one of the children.

Children explore the material paper- which can link to science and environmental studies. They learn how to make different sounds with paper, naming the sounds (wave, snap, rub, scrunch…), and learn to perform a beautiful song, with improvisations using paper.

The P1/reception course progresses in gentle 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 familiar building simple but meaningful musical structures at a level right for them- using notation and sounds that are comfortable for them.

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[dropdown_box expand_text=”Detailed overview of the Yr1/P2 course…” show_more=”Read” show_less=”Hide” start=”hide”]

The Yr1/P course starts with children exploring numbers, rhythm and movement in a fun song using Action icons- (Clap, Stomp. Jump and Woo). A pre-composed version introduces the format, before children compose their own versions, producing a great performance piece combining music and dance.

Then children explore a new icon set, using 5 percussion sounds- Shake, Tap, Ting, Scrape and Boom, played on a wider range of instruments: What are the instruments made of? (metal/wood), What are their names?, How do you hold and play them?

Children learn to control improvised performances by pointing at symbols, before composing using icons and the AB grid. The Shape Tap Ting Scrape Boom Song produces a great vocal and instrumental performance piece, with improvisation sections for ‘jamming’.

Then children explore the concepts Loud/Soft, High/Low (pitch), and Fast/Slow.

Throughout the ABC programme, concepts are introduced by discussion and learning how the concept words are spelled. Then children learn to discriminate the concepts in a Tell-the-difference game, before exploring how to perform the concepts (eg loud and soft sounds) on body, voice, and instruments. They then explore the use of the concepts creatively through conducted improvisation activities and composition.

For example, a child cues performance by walking on symbols on the floor, with other children performing loud or soft percussion sounds with each footstep as part of a fun story about a monster. Children explore loud and soft in percussion compositions.

The Explore Materials strand in Yr1/P2 is about wood, which can be linked to science and environmental studies. Children explore making different loud and soft sounds with wooden objects, naming and describing the sounds and learning to conduct them, write a score for them, and use them with a beautiful song to create a performance piece about a woodsman.

Children learn to tell the difference between high and low pitched sounds in a series of fun activities which develop increasingly fine pitch perception- starting with low/high, low/middle/high, and then introducing the first 5 steps of a musical scale- using a mouse character climbing a staricase. A fun song about Buzzing Bees allows children to explore composing and performing pitch contours, by drawing pathways between flowers drawn on the board, and following the path with their voice using a buzzing sound, creating a lovely performance piece.

Children explore Fast and Slow- with a movement game where they move like machines at different speeds. They co-ordinate actions and sounds with beats and bars played at different speeds.

Children learn to hold and play chime bars and tuned percussion, playing a clear sound with a bounce of the beater, before exploring composition and performance in innovative formats, using animal symbols to compose a beautiful piece of harmonic music perfomed at different speeds on tuned percussion.

The Yr1/P2 program 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.

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