Singing together as a school community
Lesson details
Learning outcome
I understand how changing dynamics and using my voice in different ways can help capture the character of the music.
Key learning points
- Singing together as a school community can help everyone to feel a sense of belonging.
- To create an effective performance, it is important to think carefully about the character of a song.
- We can choose dynamics such as piano (soft) and forte (loud) to reflect the character of a song.
Keywords
Dynamics - how loud or quiet the music is
Piano - a musical direction to perform softly, at a quieter volume
Forte - a musical direction to perform strongly, at a louder volume
Crescendo - a gradual increase in loudness or intensity
Common misconception
Singing forte means singing (or shouting) as loudly as I can.
It is important when we are singing forte to use our singing, not our shouting, voices. To do this, think about singing 'strongly' not 'loudly.' Can you make your voice sound confident? Energetic? Powerful?
Teacher tip
When you are looking for more volume, don’t ask children to sing “louder.” This can result in shouting and poor technique when singing. Ask for a strong sound or focus on a character word to describe the sound. E.g. “our voices need to sound bold, confident, full of energy, brave, powerful etc.”
Licence
Lesson video
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Prior knowledge starter quiz
4 Questions
Q1.What is body percussion?
Q2.What is a folk song?
Q3.What do we mean by character in music?
Q4.A is someone who uses their creative ideas to create new music.
Assessment exit quiz
4 Questions
Q1.Singing together can help us feel part of our school .
Q2.Which words can we use to describe the dynamics of a song?
Q3.Crescendo means...
Q4.When we need to sing loudly, we can think about these words to help us:
To help you plan your 3 music lesson on: Singing together as a school community, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...
To help you plan your 3 music lesson on: Singing together as a school community, 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 together: how songs are used in communities unit, dive into the full primary music curriculum, or learn more about lesson planning.