ABC Creative Music

Click on links below for pop-up sample pages.

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Reception/P1 Sample Activity 1 - Monster Steps Fairy Dance
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Reception/P1 Sample Activity 1 - Monster Steps Fairy Dance

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Sample Activity 2 - Shake Tap Ting Song
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Yr1/P2 Sample Activity 2- Shake Tap Ting Song

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Yr3/P4 Sample Activity 1 - We Are the Animals
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Yr3/P4 Sample Activity 1 - We Are the Animals

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Yr5/P6 Sample Activity 1 - Do You Wanna?
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Yr5/P6 Sample Activity 1 - Do You Wanna- Creative class Song with rapped verses

Click below to see example downloadable planning sheets for CFE and Keystages.

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Example Keystage Coding Documents
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England- Keystage Coding Examples

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Example Keystage Coding Documents
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Scotland- aCfE Coding Examples

These planning documents can be downloaded from our support website.

Yes, ABC Music programmes are designed for everyone to use- especially non-specialists teachers.

You don’t have to sing, read music or play an instrument to lead this programme really well.

Creativity made simple is powerful.

• ABC makes musical creativity safe and fun for children, and easy for teachers.
• Smart activity design guarantees coherent musical outcomes, but leave children in genuine creative control.
• This creates a great sense of ownership and engagement in children.
• This engagement drives the development of skills and concepts.
• And Creative music offers the flexibility to adapt activities to fit into many topics- for cross-curricular teaching.

The ABC Primary Classroom programme develops:

• Active listening skills, visual attention, gross and fine motor skills, language and social skills.
• Core musical skills and concepts- including developing a sense of rhythm and pitch, instrumental and singing skills, and creative skills in improvisation and composition.
• 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.

The Reception/P1 & Year1/P2 courses help children:

• Compose and perform with animal noises, actions, body percussion, and percussion instruments, using A3 Teaching aids and velcro-backed icons.
• Develop rhythmic skills and pitch perception and performance with progressive activities.
• Compose and perform simple music on voice, tuned and untuned percussion for recording or performing for video or at assemblies or concerts.

The Year2/P3 course helps children:

• Consolidate rhythmic skills and develop a more accurate perception of pitch.
• Compose music on untuned percussion and chime bars, performed with a rhythmic count as a class.
• Explore easy-to-use shape notation- to compose and play rhythms as a class- (Square = 1 sound per beat, Circle = two sounds per beat) using velcro-backed icons.

Year 3/Primary 4 course:

• Start creative work in small groups, using photocopiable handouts.
• Children follow a powerful X-factor-style audition format- with groups performing as bands, with band names.
• Use the Story Kit- to create simple stories with a soundtracks created from music and sound effects using techniques covered in the pack.
• Develop improvisation skills with voice and body percussion using fun call-and response games.

In the Year 4/Primary 5 course, children:

• Develop small group composition and performance on untuned and tuned percussion further, using downloadable handouts and audition format.
• Use rhythm, pitch and lyrics to compose songs- which can be adapted to different topics.
• Develop drum rudiment skills with the Star Drummer Pack- using left and right sticking patterns in composition and performance.
• Learn large scale compositions as a whole class on chime bars, shakers and percussion- to prepare pieces for performance and learn notation, arrangement and instrumental skills.
• Develop improvising skills using voice and percussion.

In the Year 5/ Primary6 course, children:

• Develop your drumming skills- playing high and low notes on your homemade jam-jar mini drum kit.
• Learn to play a large scale percussion composition, to prepare a performance piece for the whole class, and to learn a more interesting structure you will use in compositions.
• Learn to improvise AAAB and AABA phrases using the fun format called ‘The Human Piano’.
• Compose rap verses as small groups for a class song.
• Learn a performance piece- with a drum groove made on Hi, Mid and Lo percussion sounds, a melody made from 3 pitches and a simple chord part.
• Compose a 3 pitch melody, Hi/Mid/Lo percussion groove and simple chord part, creating a small group performance as a band.

In the Year6/Primary 7 course, children:

• Develop all the rhythmic, composition and improvising skills introduced at the end of the Year 5/P6 resource.
• Learn to play pre-composed performance pieces as a whole class, with lyrics and melody, chords and percussion groove, to prepare material for performance and learn about new concepts.
• Compose as bands with 3 beat bars and 8-beat ideas- with melody, chord and Hi/Mid/Lo percussion grooves.
• Learn to use the tie-icon, to compose with long notes lasting 2, 3 or 4 beats.
• Add lyrics to make topic related compositions.
• Learn a performance piece- Kaleidoscope life- using Ostinatos (repeated patterns) then compose your own ostinatos , and band compositions using Ostinatos.
• Use creative writing modules to explore rhyme schemes, and develop lyrics for topic related modules.

Fuller descriptions of each course/pack are available in the individual pack pages.

We work hard to make these courses easy for busy teachers to use, by providing:

• Lesson plans written in simple language with clear layout.
• Everything you need to teach in the pack.
• Teacher’s Guides including advice on room layout, troubleshooting rhythmic problems, using a CD player etc.
• A Support website with On-line Training videos and FAQs.

For our Primary Classroom courses we offer 3 levels of trainings (more info and costings on request):

1) Individual Online CPD:

• Included in the pack price, an online self-training course allows you to watch online training videos and complete a self-assessment review.
• There are 6 teacher skills and concepts you need to know, to start teaching the programme effectively.- called the ABC Core 6.
• These are covered in 6 short videos on our website, and there is lots of additional teacher support in the packs and online.

2) On-site CPD training delivered by ABC staff:

• CPD Training for ABC Music can be delivered on-site by ABC staff, and helps teachers to feel more confident when they start the programme.
• Our training programmes have been fine tuned over 12 years, and receive 91% approval ratings.

3) ABC training can also be delivered by a member of your own staff- using the SEN Music Leader Program:

• The Music Leader Programme, allows you or another member of staff to run an ABC CPD session in your school, using multimedia and video delivered from our training website. (Available from April 2013)
• A 2-hour induction webinar or training session shows your Music Leader how to use the ABC training website. Then they can show training videos and multimedia, and download handouts and knowledge reviews, to run effective training on-site for all your staff.

All Resource packs and online courses come with our 30-day no-risk guarantee- so if the packs are not right for you you get a full refund, including any return postage costs.