Year 2 Performing Arts Learning Challenges

Y2 The Language of Music Higher Or Lower?

This learning challenge invites children in Year 2 to recognise and explore high and low sounds. It introduces a range of subject specific vocabulary around pitch. Children improve their ability to sing with a sense of shape and melody and learn about how instruments are played to create higher or lower sounds.

Opening Go on a sound walk! Can you describe the sounds you hear?

Investigations 1. Can you sing familiar songs, following the shape of the melody?

2. Can you match your voice to a particular note?

English Opening task  Vocabulary extension as children use adjectives to describe the sounds they hear on the ‘sound walk’.

LC5 & LC6  The famous story of ‘Peter and the Wolf’.

Reflection task Children are to choose and retell a traditional story.

Art 3. Can you hear the difference between high and low sounds?

LC4  Look at the shapes and patterns that could be used on a graphic score. Why do certain shapes and colours make us think certain things?

4. How can we draw a picture of a sound, to show whether it goes higher or lower?

Geography

5. A musical story: Peter and the Wolf. Investigating the sounds used in ‘Peter and the Wolf’.

6. Composing our own class version of ‘Peter and the Wolf’.

Reflection Can you use notes of different pitches to help you tell one of your favourite traditional tales?

LC5 & LC6  Where does this traditional story come from?

Y2 Making and Enjoying Music Painting Pictures With Sounds An opportunity to create, perform and analyse expressive compositions and extend their sound vocabulary. In this unit, children develop understanding of how the sounds made on different musical instruments can be used expressively. They explore how sounds can describe the moods stimulated by pictures and words. They create simple compositions combining rhythm and melody and share these with the class. They begin to explore the more abstract use of sounds.

Opening Watch a range of clips of favourite movies, initially with sound muted, and then with sound on. What difference does it make to how the children feel watching the movies?

Investigations 1. How can music be used descriptively?

2. Who was invited to ‘The Carnival Of the Animals’ and can we tell when they have arrived?

3. How does Saint-Saens paint pictures of different types of birds?

4. How can we match sounds and movement descriptively?

5. How can we use tuned and un tuned percussion instruments to represent a particular animal?

6. How can we make a written plan of our animal composition?

Reflection Children to work in a small group using a variety of instruments to compose, note down and perform a short ABA composition based on any animal.

English Throughout  Descriptive language for how the children feel and what they ‘see’ in the sounds used for different animals.

Art LC1, LC3  This would be an ideal music unit to use as a stimulus for a display. Children could draw what they hear during any of the recordings used for stimulus.

LC6  Whilst coming up with basic graphic notation, discuss shapes and patterns to represent different sounds.

Digital Literacy LC3 or LC4  Opportunities for recording and photographing performances. Introduce the ideas of using editing and improving digital tracks.