In Practice: Know How - Music
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Music is a critical part of a child's development. Singing a song exercises more parts of the brain than any other activity, and the act of singing can help a child's physical, behavioural, social, educational and cognitive development. And the great thing about music is that children experience it all the time.
- Listen to and share music. Play music as children or young people enter a space, or get them to bring in and talk about their own. Set up simple activities to give context to music. For secondary schools, try running scenes from films with the volume down and asking the young people to play suitable music from their collections over the top. Or, if you have some instruments, get them to improvise a soundtrack.
- Sing through your activities. In children's centres and primary schools, singing the register and singing during transitional activities, such as walking between classrooms, is an easy winner.
- Use singing warm-ups. Those incorporating physical and vocal activity are not only healthy, but can act as ice-breakers and will get everyone relaxed and focused, whatever the activity to follow.
- Make use of online resources. Youth Music's Bongo Club provides resources for early years music-making at www.bongoclub.org.uk. Meanwhile, Sing Up supports singing for primary-age children and their leaders with songs, vocal exercises, training and projects. www.singup.org
- Make use of ICT. There's lots of software out there that's easy to use - and probably even easier for the children. Sibelius and Apple GarageBand are good examples.
- Make use of the experts. The MusicLeader Toolkit at www.musicleader.net allows you to search its 11,000-strong membership for suitable musicians. Your local music service may be able to arrange regular visits from experts, and some run their own out-of-school groups. Many professional music organisations also run educational outreach programmes.
- Set up an out-of-school club. If there's not much music-making for children in your area, get something going. Start a choir or vocal group, an instrumental ensemble or band. ContinYou and Sing Up run singing breakfast clubs - see the Sing Up page at www.continyou.org.uk.
- If you believe in the value of music education, sign up to the Music Manifesto, which aims to make sure music education is well supported and funded, and that all children and young people have access to music-making opportunities. www.musicmanifesto.co.uk
- Compiled with help from Baz Chapman, programme director of Sing Up, which is part of the Music Manifesto National Singing Programme.
