New
New
Lesson 5 of 6
  • Year 3

Singing together as a school community

I understand how changing dynamics and using my voice in different ways can help capture the character of the music.

Lesson 5 of 6
New
New
  • Year 3

Singing together as a school community

I understand how changing dynamics and using my voice in different ways can help capture the character of the music.

These resources will be removed by end of Summer Term 2025.

Switch to our new teaching resources now - designed by teachers and leading subject experts, and tested in classrooms.

These resources were created for remote use during the pandemic and are not designed for classroom teaching.

Lesson details

Key learning points

  1. Singing together as a school community can help everyone to feel a sense of belonging.
  2. To create an effective performance, it is important to think carefully about the character of a song.
  3. 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?


To help you plan your year 3 music lesson on: Singing together as a school community, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...

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.”
Teacher tip

Equipment

Licence

This content is © Oak National Academy Limited (2025), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).

Lesson video

Loading...

Prior knowledge starter quiz

Download quiz pdf

4 Questions

Q1.
What is body percussion?

making a musical sound with percussion instruments
Correct answer: making a percussive musical sound with the body
using the voice to create high and low musical sounds

Q2.
What is a folk song?

Correct answer: a song that originates from a particular country, culture or people
a repeating musical pattern that uses notes of differing pitch
creative, in-the-moment musical composition

Q3.
What do we mean by character in music?

the qualities of a person
a fictional person in a play
Correct answer: the quality of a feeling or mood, for example relaxed or calm

Q4.
A is someone who uses their creative ideas to create new music.

Correct Answer: composer

Assessment exit quiz

Download quiz pdf

4 Questions

Q1.
Singing together can help us feel part of our school .

Correct Answer: community

Q2.
Which words can we use to describe the dynamics of a song?

Correct answer: strong
fast
slow
Correct answer: soft
thick

Q3.
Crescendo means...

gradually getting slower
gradually getting faster
Correct answer: gradually getting louder

Q4.
When we need to sing loudly, we can think about these words to help us:

Correct answer: enthusiastic
Correct answer: confident
shouting
whispering
Correct answer: powerful