Like every music teacher across the world, I have been grappling with the possibilities for teaching practical music lessons during the Covid-19 pandemic. Here in England, the DfE sent out (very late in the day) several pieces of (conflicting) advice which schools have had to try and make sense of. I’ve been lucky that my school have trusted me to interpret these as I see fit, and have been really supportive of making music happen this term. Originally the DfE said that singing could only take place in groups of 15 or less, but then they removed that number caveat just before the beginning of term, after every single music teacher in the country had already planned their lessons…! I teach in classrooms, and for me there is not enough space or ventilation to meet the new DfE requirements for singing, so this is still off the menu for us!
Back to Basics Coping with the new normal of music teaching We’ve also been careful about the sharing of equipment, and the type of instruments that we use. Year 2 used to learn the pBuzz, which has got to be one of the spittiest instruments known to man, so we swapped this for the glockenspiel. We now keep the glockenspiels in the Y2 cupboard, and no other bubbles are allowed to use them, plus they are numbered so the same children get the same instrument each lesson. They do have to share with a partner, but in fairness that doesn’t require them to sit any closer together than they do normally! Year 2 is the first (and last) time I meet the children, as the rest of the music curriculum is taught by class teachers. This means that I usually feel the pressure to get the children to the correct standard for the end of Key Stage Expectations, so that I can mop up everything they need to learn in KS1, and prepare them to go on with music in KS2. However, thanks to Covid there are parts of the curriculum that are just impossible to teach at the moment - hello again singing!
