Progression in Music Books

There are [5 books in the Progression in Music series] https://www.primary-music.org/publications-1), each written primarily with the generalist music teacher in mind, but with ideas for collaboration between visiting musicians and the generalist class teacher in developing curriculum classroom. They can be purchased from the Lulu books website (by searching the bookstore), or through websites such as Amazon searching by authors name: David Wheway.

‘Safari Park’:
Focuses on exploring sound, (vocal and instrumental); working with others to refine and select sounds for compositions. Composition work is developed progressively across the primary age-range. Activities are intentionally brief, encouraging exploration and development of ideas. There are suggestions for assessing the children’s progress, and for children to reflect on their work.

‘Bubbles’:
Focuses on developing awareness of, and ability to maintain a steady beat and rhythm, whilst supporting children in reading simple notation and composition. Throughout are activities/games for the primary classroom

‘Listen Carefully’:
Focuses on developing awareness of pitch, the ability to develop pitch awareness and composition on tuned percussion and vocally. The materials support children in reading simple pitch notations with ideas which relate to and

‘It’s OK’:
Focuses on developing active listening and identifying aspects and terminology of music including response and genre.

‘Signs and Symbols’
Focuses on developing simple ways of representing sound, from pictorial, through signs then simple invented symbolic representation, leading to children’s own graphic compositions. The terms ‘signs’ and ‘symbol’ are used to differentiate the children’s invented representations from ‘staff’ notation (e.g. crotchets, quavers, etc.), but are a useful precursor to stave notation.