14 minute read
Join the Club!
Andrew Davies explores the power and potential of extra-curricular music
At the end of the summer term, I asked my pupils to draw their favourite musical moment from the past year. In truth, perhaps my motive was to generate some inspiring artwork for the music display in the school hall, but if I’d been hoping for drawings of their class playing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ on the ukulele or lustily singing ‘Harvest Samba’ in assembly, I was cruelly disappointed.
Instead, with increasing regularity, the children presented me with pictures of things that they hadn’t done in actual lessons at all. ‘Singing in choir at the O2’; ‘playing drums in the band’; ‘singing my solo at the summer fair’ and ‘acting on stage in drama club’: these were the musical memories from the past year they treasured most. As I looked around my Music Room at the photographs of smiling children on the walls, I realised that, unconsciously, I’d decorated the walls with largely the same events the children had drawn. We love our Music lessons and sing our hearts out in singing assemblies, yet what had really stuck most in the children’s hearts and minds - and was stuck quite literally to my wallswas neither: it was instead what the children had done in extra-curricular activities or clubs.
Clubs are exciting for pupils and for teachers. Exciting for children, since they aren’t there because they have to be, but because they want to be; and exciting for teachers, as we aren’t strapped to the National Curriculum, but are free to plan whatever works for our pupils and our setting. Clubs provide children with new experiences and friendships that often aren’t possible in lessons, and in a child’s world of lessons, lessons and more lessons, clubs give children the memories that stay in their hearts forever and schools the sparkle that makes their website and offer stand out from the crowd. I even applied for my current role because of the clubs I’d have the opportunity to run! You may well be a club convert like me and your school may have an exciting extra-curricular musical schedule already; but just in case it doesn’t, I hope I can persuade you of the joy music clubs can offer you and your pupils: a joy too often squeezed out of our time-pressured and objective-filled curriculum.
Research
It’s fine to be enthusiastic, I hear you say, but perhaps I need to provide a little evidence of the value of extracurricular music. And if you ever need to convince a school leader how valuable music clubs can be, some research is always a great resource to have up your sleeve. The DfE’s National Plan for Music Education (2022) cites Hampshire County Council’s 2013 model for school music, one of the 3 key symbiotic elements being musical events and opportunities. It argues school choirs and instrumental ensembles are ‘key features of high-quality school music provision’, quoting a case study associating music clubs with an increased uptake of pupils later choosing to study Music at GCSE, A Level and beyond. Children may give up musical activities due to lack of opportunity outside whole class lessons (Hallam, Creech and MacQueen 2018); parents not being able to fund expensive private tuition (Garnett 2013); children not meeting professional musicians or taking part in musical events beyond the classroom (Varvarigou, Creech and Hallam 2014); or pupils not being given a say in selection of repertoire or musical styles studied (Andrews 2012): yet music clubs can address all these potential pitfalls. Ofsted’s 2023 research document Striking the Right Note identifies the ‘critical role’ clubs play in complementing the curriculum, developing pupils’ talents, providing opportunities to perform and including children with SEND. If it is not the child themselves who represents the barrier, but the limiting environment that surrounds them (Bell 2014), then clubs can play a pivotal role in removing those obstacles so that every child can make vital, positive formative musical experiences at primary school which will help them embrace music into adulthood and for their whole lives long.
Practicalities
Enough research; time to get down to the practicalities! I expect your school already offers music and drama clubs, and every setting is unique and its practitioners know it best. Hopefully however, what follows might offer some ideas that open up new avenues to your pupils: after all, every child who enjoys a musical club is another future adult with skills, experience and enthusiasm to share with the world in the years to come!
Time of Day
Clubs can run before school, after it or at lunchtime, depending on when you or colleagues have space in your hectic schedule. All three options have their challenges and will be setting-dependent: before and after school rely on parents being willing and able to drop off and collect (although if your setting has wraparound childcare already, you may have a captive audience of children in the school grounds).
Lunchtimes by contrast can prove a battle against the lure of the playground, especially in the warmer months.
Location
Space is often at a premium in primary schools; music is noisy and instruments are space-hungry, which doesn’t help. Singers and actors need a clear space without tables in the way, although if you need to clear/replace furniture or set up instruments, children will always be keen to do this for you, especially if you set a musical timer or reward with house points. School halls are perfect for larger groups and rehearsing in the venue where you may well perform; for smaller groups a classroom may offer more structure, control and a less cavernlike acoustic! Class teachers are often happy to let you borrow their room: I particularly like running a club in the classroom where I will be teaching immediately afterwards or beforehand.
Registration
Hopefully your school office will be able to use an automated system to enable parents to book children’s attendance at clubs; either way it’s important a register is kept so that you know which children are in the building! A register also keeps track of who is attending regularly and any year groups with low membership who could be targeted; it’s also really helpful for providing pupil numbers and name lists for external events when organisers ask for them!
Scheduling
Try to choose a time for a club that doesn’t immediately clash with another activity for the same age or set of interests. For example, I’ll schedule a KS1 music club on the evening when my school’s KS2 dance club runs, so that pupils don’t have to choose between two activities they like and my club doesn’t lose members as a result!
Advertising
Try to advertise early: before the end of the preceding term if possible, so that families don’t book up other activities first. Flyers need to give the vital information without too much text, but at the same time make the activity sound exciting. Colourful photos are great, especially featuring pupils themselves in uniform at major performances, and if there is a cost associated with the club, try to avoid it becoming so high that parents become unwilling to sign children up. Schools may be able to subsidise PPG pupils attending a fee-charging club, too. Children often attend clubs in friendship groups: encourage children to bring friends and it doesn’t hurt to give a reminder of your club to pupils and parents who might be interested, but whose busy schedule might get in the way of them signing up.
Performing opportunities
This is probably the most important one of all. A music club will always get a greater attendance if you’re working towards a performance, especially a large one beyond the school gates. Use the performing opportunity as a carrot to tempt pupils in by starting to rehearse for your biggest event at the beginning of the year, then put it on ice for Christmas and return to it later in the year. That way, it isn’t over early enough for children to decide to ‘quit’ and cease attending afterwards.
Routines and Respect
Finally, a club may not be a lesson, but as any practitioner knows, musical performance is teamwork and children need to respect the club and its leaders. Giving pupils a say in repertoire or setting up, or even asking older pupils to help run the activity, can often play a huge part in children working to support the club and feeling a sense of belonging and loyalty towards it Rewards at the end of the year recognising sustained commitment may prove helpful if you can afford them, and my children know the soloists - and Year 6 Music Prefect appointments - will go to pupils who support clubs with the greatest longevity. If you quit through personal choice, you won’t get your moment at the microphone!
Ideas
So what clubs can you run: what activities can the children actually do in a music club? The options are far wider than might be imagined - I ran 14 clubs across two schools last year! While I’m probably over-enthusiastic and not a great model to follow for work-life balance, it does hopefully illustrate the scope available.
Choirs
Most schools have a choir and alongside all the health benefits of regular group singing, it’s a great way for pupils to represent your school musically in the local community. Get the children to announce or introduce their own songs, and set up some simple but powerful choreography to make the performance visually stand out.If you’re a primary school, separate KS2 and KS1 choirs usually enable you to target your repertoire to children’s ages and vocal ranges better. You may have enough children for an additional auditioned choir in UKS2; this could be for part-singing, soloists or more advanced choreography. Sign up to national or locallyorganised singing festivals if budget, transport and time will allow - this provides ready-made child-friendly repertoire and usually pre-prepared backing tracks, saving you from choosing and preparing music yourself. Do sing yourself to model the melodies and conduct the choir for a high level of coordination and vocal technique. Selecting repertoire is a whole separate article in itself but a good starting point includes an appropriate pitch range for young voices, family-friendly lyrics and songs which children are familiar with or in a style they’ll enjoy.
Instrumental Ensembles
If you have enough pupils taking individual instrumental lessons, whether in school or outside it, you may be able to build a mixed orchestra or band. Ask your school office for lists of all pupils taking private instrumental tuition in school and approach them directly; although mixed ensembles will require writing or resourcing multiple parts, it does allow different levels of attainment to be catered for. One or two pieces a term is more than enough and try to get pupils’ private instrumental tutors on board so that children can practise their parts at home and in their private lessons.
If you have a WCET (Whole Class Ensemble instrumental Tuition) scheme in your school, you could offer a single instrument ensemble to children in older years who have completed the scheme. This is a great way to achieve instrumental progression beyond a year-group WCET where the curriculum itself doesn’t allow room for it. Of course, doing this may incur an additional cost in requiring additional instruments beyond the curriculum set, although children could be encouraged to purchase their own instrument if the cost is cheap: for example, recorders can be purchased for under £5 each from educational providers if purchased in bulk and then sold on to parents by the school.
It may be worth asking colleagues in school if any of them play an instrument. Music clubs are often viewed as the territory of specialists but they may be up for running one, especially if you can provide the resources they need. My discovery of a guitarist amongst the school support staff led to a new guitar club starting after school for pupils. Instruments for a club such as this can be hired from a local music hub. Alternatively, your local music hub may be willing to come into school to offer an instrumental club, especially if they are already providing curricular music teaching to a year group in school on the same day. If there’s an ensemble you cannot logistically cater for in school, then local music hubs are bound to run something similar locally outside school which you could promote to your pupils instead.
Drumming
Drumming can be a universally accessible instrumental club for children who don’t play any other instrument. A class set of djembes can take on a new life if additionally used in a club, and even if no instruments are available, a set of orange B&Q buckets make versatile and enduring percussion. Drumsticks can be purchased cheaply or cardboard rolls from greaseproof paper/foil/etc. or rolled-up newspaper will also suffice. Many videos online offer bucket drumming routines to copy or why not use a speaker to play a song on YouTube and design your own drumming accompaniment to play alongside it.
Piano or Keyboard
As a young pianist, I often felt left out from school instrumental ensembles, as the piano just isn’t a traditional orchestral instrument and there’s usually only one piano in the school hall. Conversely, the instrument often played by the most children in primary school is the piano! With a few digital keyboards and an extension lead however, you can easily run a piano club (I call mine ‘Keys to Success’!) Design your own simple group warm ups or scales, maybe with a drumbeat behind them, then teach the children a simple pop melody and they can play it alongside a karaoke track instead of singing! It’s possible to differentiate for levels of experience with right-hand, chords or both hands, creating a very mixed multiple-part ensemble that uses some of the strongest musicians amongst your pupils, then you can take them to your school fairs or community performances to provide entertainment in between choirs or perform a set entirely by themselves.
Songwriting
Unless you write your own songs already, this might seem quite daunting as a club, but it really isn’t! Composing is the element of music education that usually proves trickiest to implement in the general classroom, so fostering a group of children confident to come up with their own ideas and perform them in front of others can prove hugely helpful. Composing is all about experimentation - effectively improvising but trying out multiple options and writing the best one down - and as such it’s a really inclusive activity where no-one can ‘get it wrong’. I normally encourage children to come up with a snappy set of words or phrase and then pick some notes out to fit it. Repeat it a few times and add variations and you have a song!
Other Options
There are plenty of further alternatives:
• If your main choir is predominantly female, a boys’ choir may well encourage a greater number of male singers
• Steel pan ensembles are popular at secondary schools if you have the budget or instruments
• An instrument-making club using junk modelling - either following templates or just free creation - can prove very rewarding, especially if children work on joint creations over several weeks
• A club playing music of a particular genre can be a good approach for mixed singing and instrumental ensembles, such as Gospel, Reggae or Calypso
• A choreographed pop group can be a great way to combine singing and dance and tempt in children who like one of the two disciplines but wouldn’t attend a club that solely offered the other.
• A curriculum-linked club - you could run a Maths club consisting of counting and times-table songs and choreography; a creative writing club that creates play scripts the children subsequently act; an art club creating scenery for shows or an ICT club designing programmes for performances and flyers for clubs... the potential is only bounded by our own imaginations!
I started by discussing children’s favourite memories of music in school, so I thought I’d finish by coming full circle back to my own. We choose to work in education for a variety of reasons, but at the heart of them all is often a desire to make a difference to children’s lives and improve their life chances. Of course we achieve that in a thousand ways, but whether through gaining cultural capital, growing confidence or discovering new ambitions, I feel sure the extra-curricular clubs and opportunities we provide to children plays a crucial part. That smile of a child performing on stage believing in themselves and knowing they belong in the ensemble, environment and community they are performing in isn’t just an unforgettable moment for them themselves: it’s an unforgettable moment for us all.
