Characterful singing
Lesson details
Learning outcome
I can analyse the intention and meaning in a song and sing with a sense of character.
Key learning points
- By breaking a song’s structure into sections, we can better understand its story and decide how to stage each part.
- We can follow the rise and fall of pitch by reading a musical score.
- Using gestures can help us to sing legato.
- How we move and how we sing can combine for effective storytelling.
- We can reflect on our performance to assess how clearly we've conveyed a story.
Keywords
Score - the written form of a composition showing the notation and instructions for instruments or voices
Legato - performing in a smooth way
Sequence - a melodic phrase which is repeated at a higher or lower pitch
Structure - the way the music is organised
Staging (verb) - making decisions about creating a performance of our version of a story
Common misconception
Once on stage, it is common to focus more on the singing and drop some of the physicality.
We can avoid this by melding the two. How we move and how we sing can be described in similar ways. For example, legato, or smooth singing, may happen whilst we are moving in a smooth manner.
Teacher tip
Allowing time for pupils to reflect on and evaluate their performance at this stage is valuable as it will help them to improve their staging and characterisation. Filming the performance in this lesson is helpful to support this process.
Licence
Lesson video
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Prior knowledge starter quiz
4 Questions
Q1.When describing texture, which of these words could we use?
Q2.When a melodic phrase is repeated but played at a different pitch, we call this a .
Q3.What musical word tells us to perform in a smooth way?
Q4.Match these words to their definitions:
Assessment exit quiz
4 Questions
Q1.The written form of a composition showing the notation and instructions for instruments or voices is called a ...
Q2.Match these character building blocks to how they help us to stage the song.
Q3.True or false? The way we move and the way we sing help us to communicate the meaning of the song to an audience.
Q4.The way the music is organised is called ...
To help you plan your 6 music lesson on: Characterful singing, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...
To help you plan your 6 music lesson on: Characterful singing, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs.
The starter quiz will activate and check your pupils' prior knowledge, with versions available both with and without answers in PDF format.
We use learning cycles to break down learning into key concepts or ideas linked to the learning outcome. Each learning cycle features explanations with checks for understanding and practice tasks with feedback. All of this is found in our slide decks, ready for you to download and edit. The practice tasks are also available as printable worksheets and some lessons have additional materials with extra material you might need for teaching the lesson.
The assessment exit quiz will test your pupils' understanding of the key learning points.
Our video is a tool for planning, showing how other teachers might teach the lesson, offering helpful tips, modelled explanations and inspiration for your own delivery in the classroom. Plus, you can set it as homework or revision for pupils and keep their learning on track by sharing an online pupil version of this lesson.
Explore more key stage 2 music lessons from the Singing for performance: conveying emotion and character through performance unit, dive into the full primary music curriculum, or learn more about lesson planning.