Teach Primary Issue 18.6

• What is a sequence? • Can you sort these words into a sequence: dawn, night, morning, afternoon, midday, evening? • Can you sing or play the ‘cuckoo’ notes? • What can you do now that you could not do when you were a baby? Talk about other lists that could be learned in a song or rhyme, such as months or seasons of the year, the colours of the rainbow, and the order of special days in the year. Chant the words together. A tune may emerge, or you can choose a traditional tune to use. 3 | COMPOSING SONGS The Ofsted Subject Report on music, September 2023, praised singing provision in primary schools, but noted that the teaching of composing was a weak area. You can use the following ideas to encourage children to create their own tunes or melodies. Provide pupils with limited notes on tuned percussion instruments. Start with two ‘cuckoo’ Makes you feel less worried, brightens up your days. Sing a song on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday too. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, keep on singing through. [spoken] And on Sunday you can sing some more. Adapt the words, but use the same tune, to sing about the school day and help children to order events and be more prepared for the day ahead: Singing in the morning, when we take the register. Sing a song at break time, lining up to play. Sing a song in literacy and when you’re doing maths. Singing in the afternoon and we’ll have lots of laughs. • Read the poem Now We Are Six by A. A. Milne and challenge the children to learn it off by heart. Perform it with pairs of pupils reciting pairs of lines. • Write your own version of the poem using this framework: When I was one, I learned to ____ When I was two, I learned to ____ [and so on] Now I’m five/six/seven, I can ____ • The children sing this using by repeating the first line of the melody for the pirate song, ‘When I was one’ ( tinyurl.com/tp-OneSong ) . • Talk to the children about their favourite toys. Do they know what their parents and grandparents played with when they were young? Make lists of ‘now and then’ toys. Can the children sequence different toys according to which decade people played with them most? As a class, can you make this sequence into a song? EXTENDING THE LESSON notes, G and E, as in the starting activity. Remove the other bars on the instrument if possible, so only two notes are available to start with. Have another go at playing two-note patterns for children to copy by singing or playing. Can they make up their own patterns? Then try adding A. Let the children explore patterns using three notes. They might discover or recognise the G, G, E, A, G – E ‘taunting’ melody (Na, na, na, na, na, na). Add some words such as ‘When I was a baby’ and develop it into a song about their personal past: When I was a baby, I couldn’t ____ [G G E A G E, G E A E] Now, I am [ 5 , 6, 7 ] , I’ve learned to talk/run/throw/ ride [G E A G E, G E D C] Some children might use the whole of the pentatonic or five-note scale – C, D, E, G, A – to compose their tunes. Invite pupils to write down their patterns using the letter names. Record the tunes on a tablet so the children can listen back to their songs. Finally, challenge the children to create a melodic pattern and add their own ideas for words on a topic of their choice. Judith Harries is an experienced early years and primary school teacher. She specialises in teaching music and drama and creates educational content for a variety of publications. “Songs are a useful way to learn fixed sequences of events” USEFUL QUESTIONS www.teachwire.net | 91