Prior skills lessons These lessons cover the basic skills that children will ideally have covered prior to beginning their class instrument sessions. Children may have covered some/ all of these aspects of music in current classroom music provision. These objectives and activities are suggested in order to ensure that children have equal access to prior learning before starting their recorder teaching.
LESSON 1 Objectives
Understanding pitch as High and low Care and handling of instruments Understand your right hand from your left hand Understand the difference between pulse and rhythm
Suggested Activities
Play right hand/ left hand games What is pulse? Link to your own pulse or a ticking clock as a steady beat. You could link this to science and get them to run about and feel the difference in speed. What is rhythm? Clapping topic words/ clapping names/ minibeast names for example. What is pitch? High and low sounds – different length keys on a xylophone – longest, lowest on the left, short Is higher. If you have Boomwhackers or chime bars, line them up in length order and see what happens Stick games
LESSON 2 Objectives
Understand the basic elements of music – dynamics (loud, quiet and science) Understand the basic elements of music – tempo (fast and slow)
Suggested Activities
What are dynamics? How loud or quiet? Introduce the idea of ‘soft’ as another word for quiet. Link to maths greater than and smaller than signs. Using pictures/ changing size of symbols to represent differing dynamics What is silence? Why is it important to music? Sense of space… practice silence at the beginning and end of playing. Signal for silence What is tempo? Difference in speed – use the idea of the hare and the tortoise. Rainstorm
LESSON 3 Objectives
Understand the basic elements of music: Long and short duration and rhythm Understand the names and values of crotchets and quavers (chairs and tables) Be able to repeat a rhythm pattern
Suggested Activities
What is duration? Difference in note lengths use dots and lines Chairs and tables/ use a chart with crosses in – 1 box is same beat crotchet is 1 beat – quavers are 2 half beats Start with counting in 4s, clapping 4, and then leaving repeating 4 crotchet patterns back, then add in some quavers to make interesting rhythms. Don’t clap this one back Pass the rhythm round the circle Pass the rhythm cards using basic notation Grouping words into same rhythms
Additional suggested resources
Music Works 3 PCET publishing 4 beat rhythm cards Individual chair/ table cards Recording lists CD – Classics for children DECCA
Top tips for instrumental teaching
Allow one minute –exploration time – to get the banging out of the way The quicker you get children ‘doing’ and trying things out – the better! Need: Class set of non tuned percussion/ clapping could be used Tuned percussion with different lengths of notes (Boomwhackers/ chime bars)