Revitalising Singing in Schools

Cathy Lamb, Director of Music Outreach at Lichfield Cathedral School shares their approach to bringing back singing to schools post-Covid. @CathyLamb_org

Over the many years of leading Continuing Professional Development for teachers (both specialist and non-specialist) I am constantly asked for repertoire ideas. Having now worked with 1000s of children, it is also clear that repertoire choice is half the battle with getting children singing – and the headache is that it is never ‘one-size fits all’. Lockdown came as a real shock to everyone and suddenly all the work that so many of us were doing either had to stop completely or had to shift online What I had not expected, was that lockdown was going to enable time to create some resources for MusicShare, a funded partner of The Music Partnership, coordinated between Lichfield Cathedral School and Lichfield Cathedral

Really it began as a bit of fun, writing a tune called The New Normal, which we sent out to schools to use. Feedback was really pleasing and so when we started to work online with schools we offered them a chance to have songs tailored to themes they might be working on and therein began the creation of the resource.Very quickly it became clear that as part of the Cultural Recovery Fund it would be really exciting to have a specific MusicShare website where these new resources could be showcased. Teaching videos accompanied by professional band, backing tracks, performance tracks, sheet music and lyric sheets alongside professional development guidance and links to the many brilliant resources that were created by many organisations during the pandemic

Once things began to open back up again, it became very clear that there was still a huge nervousness around singing and the safety of it, given it had been considered so dangerous for the spread of Covid-19. We, and all the hub organisations, have had to work really hard to gently encourage schools to return to singing, because we all know how vitally important it is for our children. Both to celebrate, and to continue to encourage schools, particularly those for whom online may still not be the most ideal way to work, The Music Partnership commissioned The Primary Songbook to go free to every school in the area

The Primary Songbook is mainly aimed at primary schools and yet all of the songs are very user-friendly, particularly for primary/secondary transition The book is divided into 3 sections – Early Years Foundation Stage, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 and for each stage it has an introduction on how to work with the voices, then the songs, then a set of lesson plans with a suggested way of introducing the songs into weekly school life, followed by an inventory of recommended resources None of the songs will be found published anywhere else and so are completely unique to our resource We hope that the songs are attractive both in terms of their topics and content but also because they are age-appropriate in terms of range, rhythm and style.

We are particularly delighted with the design of the book, which is colourful and extremely user-friendly and we are grateful to Lee Armstrong for his tireless work on this. The Music Partnership are already talking about the creation of Volume 2 and we are delighted already with the excellent feedback we have received

The book continually refers back to the website resource, which extends the ability to use the songs with the backing tracks etc. We are also particularly pleased that we have created a series of videos about vocal health and what to expect of voices in the different age ranges, hopefully to aid the choice of repertoire.

We also created a set of videos using key words from the music curriculum, creating a series of hashtag videos that emerge from the key stage document to help nonspecialists with some of the complex musical jargon with practical steps on how to address these while singing in the classroom

MusicShare is now delivering two-termly online professional development sessions in conjunction with The Music Partnership, known as ‘Singing Basics’, which have proved incredibly popular, and are also available within the password protected area of the website

Here’s to a continuation of the rejuvenation of singing in all our regions and to continuing partnerships that enable music education to thrive!