Back to Basics

Coping with the new normal of music teaching

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!

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!

After a few days of worrying about this, and about how to adapt my normal pBuzz curriculum (which relies heavily on singing, and uses flat notes) to suit the requirements and use the glockenspiel, I suddenly realised that I was looking at everything the wrong way round! I often worry that my Year 2’s aren ’t coming up to me with the basic musical skills that they need, but there is limited time to do anything about this as I need to ensure that the whole curriculum is covered. Now that Covid has destroyed the possibility of teaching the curriculum as is, this is finally my chance to get back to basics! I threw all my plans out of the window, and started again! This term we have been concentrating solely on pulse and rhythm using clapping, body percussion, and the glockenspiels (using one note, or an ostinato pattern). We start by clapping the pulse while we go round the room saying our names over the top, then we clap along to a song, then we use words as an inspiration for some rhythms (we’ve used pupils own names, favourite foods, and animals so far!), and then we perform these to each other on the glockenspiel. We usually finish up performing body percussion to a song.

To me as a musician, this feels very limited. However, I have been surprised that the children absolutely love it! They show no difference in enthusiasm between this and the more ‘interesting’ curriculum, and it has the added advantage that I am slowly able to instil the basic skills that I had to gloss over before. This has completely changed my outlook, and now I think I will always start Year 2 this way (but with the addition of singing so that we can work on pitch matching too), and concertina the rest of the curriculum into the remainder of the year. The only issue I have had so far is the children wanting to sing along to the songs as they play. Who ever thought they’d be in a position where they had to tell children NOT to sing in a music lesson?! I feel like a musical Grinch!

Dr Elizabeth Stafford is Editor of Primary Music Magazine. @DrLizStafford