Over the past 15 years, ABC Creative Music has developed innovative cost-effective Nursery, Primary & ASN/SEN music programmes, delivered on interactive whiteboards and/or resource packs- with highly successful training programmes for non-specialist teachers.
Founded by leading Jazz Musicians Tom and Phil Bancroft, and developed in classrooms across Scotland, ABC programmes engineer grown-up musical creativity into child-friendly resources- with three important results:
1) Smart activity design guarantees clear coherent musical outcomes that excite children and communicate with audiences. As children grow, the music children make develops in sophistication as they do, but is always clear, fun and entertaining.
2) Simple activity interfaces leave children with real control of creative decision-making- so they have a strong sense of ownership of the musical outcomes.
3) Simple resource design, with the clever stuff hidden behind the scenes, means non-specialist teachers can effectively lead all programmes.
Children love discovering ‘I am musical’- driving engagement with music and the development of core musical concepts and skills.
On-screen interactives develop creativity with animal noises, actions and percussion sounds. Age-appropriate notation develops in sophistication as children grow, moving to handout-based group work- with powerful audition formats honing performance skills.
Interest in the psychology of creativity makes teaching and learning safe and fun. By using simple of ideas of form (repetition- “do it again”, contrast- “do something different”, variation- “same but different”) , children learn how to make music in real-time (improvisation) and ahead of time (composition) before applying their creative skills to instruments.
Similar care is taken in the design of CPD training for teachers- addressing head-on the anxiety teaching creates in many classroom teachers.
Music Specialists can move between easy-to-use shape notation and the stave, and the Music Leader programme allows them to use the ABC training website to lead CPD training of non-specialists in their own authorities, and support classroom teachers activities and integrate their own specialist input with that of class teachers in their schools- maximising the benefits for children.
ABC Online delivers everything you need through the interactive whiteboards: downloadable handouts, online assessment, training videos, curricular coding, and cross-curricular topic modules- including material for Christmas, the Olympics and Commonwealth games, and soon a Scots language module. Online Programmes are available for mainstream Primary classrooms and SEN/ASN settings.
Resource packs include mainstream classroom programmes for Nursery, Primary, specialised programmes for SEN/ASN settings, with additional programmes covering Global Citizenship Through Music, Enterprise (record and sell a CD of your own music to raise money for your school) and an exciting creative Singing resource- with a new Djembe resource about to come on-stream.
“Children are having so much fun, they don’t realise they are learning!” Kirstie Love, Primary Teacher