Elementary school music resources

This collection of worksheets will support teaching and learning in both KS3 and GCSE music classrooms. They can be used in many different ways. They can be used for learning, revising and the testing of knowledge, as part of a lesson and as homework consolidation activities. They can be laminated and used with white board pens and they can be used to differentiate activites.

This resource includes 4 worksheets. The ‘listening mat’ has all the information included and can be used as a listening aid when you are teaching students to talk about the dynamics of the music. The other three worksheets support student’s growth of understanding as they become able to understand and use the Italian terms from memory. Or they can be presented as a differentiated task. They are suitable for use with GCSE and older KS3 students. These worksheets can be used as starter or plenary activities, or as a main aid for a listening activity. They can be laminated and re-used as required, or can be set as home work.

A bundle of worksheets focusing on the development of knowledge of note lengths and rhythm. These worksheets can be used progressively, from resources to support the learning of duration, to resources which test knowledge of duration. There are also worksheets which support students in building more interesting rhythms. These worksheets can be used in the classroom as part of an activity. They can be colour coded to represent different abilities, and they can be laminated and re-used as starter or plenary activities. The can also be used as home work activities. They are useful for KS3 to learn to read and write duration and for GCSE to revise from and to further stretch their knowledge of using simple and compound time to create more interesting and complex rhythmic ideas.

This is intended for use by GCSE music or able KS3 music students. It may also be used when teaching music theory lessons in any capacity. The objective of this worksheet is to recap and consolidated knowledge of key signatures up to three sharps and flats as this is the requirement for GCSE music. Once students have learned how to work out key signatures using the ‘order of sharps and flats’ method, you can use this 2-part worksheet to improve student’s understanding as a starter in the following lesson, or as a plenary when required. There is an extension to each worksheet, requiring students to use their less-used knowledge of the bass clef in a more independent way.

The RAF march past arranged for Trumpet, Trumpet, Horn, Trombine, Ehphonium and Tuba

This is a scheme of work in which students learn to sing, strum the chords of the chorus, and play the riff of Sweet Child of Mine on the ukulele. It is highly differentiated with 4 levels of difficulty for both the chords of the chorus and the riff. The easy levels are very easy while the harder levels are challenging for young ukulele players. Lesson 1: Learn to sing the verses and chorus Lesson 2: Strum chords in the chorus Lessons 3 and 4: Pluck the riff Lesson 5: Put it all together to play the full song.

This is a scheme of work for KS3 on performance and composition skills on Theme and Variation, exploring Pachelbel’s canon as an example. Lesson 1/2: History of the piece, what is theme and variation, sing the theme, play the theme on the keyboard Lesson 2/3: start to create variations on the theme using a keyboard Lesson 4: Play the theme on the ukulele. This is scaffolded to support lower ability and challenge higher ability learners. Lesson 5: Optional- can include keyboard arpeggios Lesson 6/7: group composition task where some students play keyboards/piano and some play ukulele. They create variations together (or individually and string them together) to create a theme and variation composition. I have included an assessment criteria which can be adapted for however you want to use it.

This is the melody of We wish you a merry Christmas written with lots of ledger lines, both higher and pitches. Suitable for secondary students who need to practise reading ledger lines.

An overview of how to discuss each musical element

These revision grids for the Edexcel 9-1 GCSE Music course contain all the key information specified by the exam board condensed into easily understandable “student speak” lists, with key information highlighted in bold. The information has also been separated into the “essential for all” basic facts in green, the more detailed info in blue and the high level “icing on the cake” stuff in pink. I find that this helps to direct students revision - for lower ability pupils it helps to say “just focus on the green, then work on the blue” to make the information seem more accessible. For higher ability pupils it helps prioritise their revision into what is the most crucial information to tackle before the higher level detail. All are high quality A3 PDF files (but can be printed at A4 and look almost as nice!)

This clear and easy to use powerpoint covers: Understanding rhyme and structure in Billie Holiday’s Fine and Mellow Step by step tasks and visual aids to support students with creating their own blues song with correct rhythm and structure. Examples of rhyming words are given to support lower ability learners. Designed for students in year 8.

This powerpoint is suitable for a cover lesson. Students watch a video then create a mind map on what they can see and hear in the video. They then generate a poem, diary entry or lyrics based on their mind map. There is some written contextual background as well as a you tube video link.