Following Covid, we have decided to focus on developing skills on keyboards in Year 3 and 4, instead of teaching recorder. The children use keyboards in many Music lessons in Year 5 and 6, and developing these skills on one instrument will help with their ability to perform confidently in more pieces of music further up the school. Many children have keyboards or pianos at home so take sheet music home to practise following lessons. Recorder lessons, as well as keyboard lessons and all our other Music lessons taught in KS2, are available to practise online on Charanga YUMU, which can be accessed at home with login details provided by school. Recorders are also available to purchase from the school office, so children can bring recorders in to Music lessons to play if they wish.
Year 3 and Year 4 started by learning how to play the notes B and A on keyboards, using the fun Charanga recorder lessons we have always used. The piece ‘Abie’s Blues’ uses these notes, along with teaching the children about notation with the treble clef, time signature, crotchets, minims and their rests. They learnt about the Blues style and how to play using correct fingering on a keyboard with the right hand.

This class have progressed over the year to being able to read and follow the duration of notes and rests using standard notation and to play in time together while counting quietly or in their heads. After some practice time, they used the correct fingers on the right hand to play A and B on a keyboard independently together using minims, semibreves and semibreve rests.

This class improved their first performance of this funk piece to play it independently using the notes D, E and F on a keyboard. They use their listening skills, reading and working out the duration and pitch of the notes from the notation, plus lots of practice, to make this a successful piece!

Year 5 children have been learning about rap and hip hop music. They learnt a grime rap called 'Stop' about antibullying, then wrote their own rhyming couplets in pairs to make some verses. We put this together in a class rap and the children performed it. They didn't have much time! This class performed a verse acapella after doing it with the backing track. They kept together in time without a conductor really well!