This is a unit of work that I created for use with Years 3, 4, 5 & 6. It spans six sessions, although it can run for A LOT longer if desired! Although I am a musician, it requires no musical knowhow whatsoever to teach! I was very conscious of this as I was sharing the resource with teachers who lacked confidence in their musical knowledge and skills. This unit focuses predominately on listening, appraisal and understanding, but there are also opportunities for composition and performance included. KS2 Music Attainment Targets Covered: • Pupils should be taught to listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory. • Appreciate and understand a wide range of high quality music drawn from a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians. • Develop an understanding of the history of music. There are also optional links to Science within each lesson, which enable you to cover the statutory requirements for teaching sound: • Identify how sounds are made, associating some of them with something vibrating. • Recognise that vibrations from sounds travel through a medium to the ear. • Find patterns between the pitch of a sound and features of the object that produced it. • Find patterns between the volume of a sound and the strength of the vibrations that produced it. • Recognise that sounds get fainter as the distance from the sound source increases. As a Maths Specialist I also couldn’t resist throwing in a few sorting opportunities in the form of Venn and Carroll diagrams! Overview • The topic starts with an informal baseline assessment and ends with an informal end of unit assessment. • Each session focuses on a specific family of the orchestra. • Pupils enter the classroom each session to an example of music featuring that particular family, giving them the opportunity to appraise music and develop their own taste. • Pupils learn what each orchestral instrument is called, what it sounds like and how it produces sound. • Pupils become familiar with the terms pitch, timbre, vibration, dynamics and tempo. • Children conduct research and learn through activities; however, notes are included for classrooms where ICT/books are not readily available or where pupils lack sufficient research skills. • Activities are fun and active - with low entry and high ceiling for differentiation. • A wode range of activities, e.g. rapping, sorting, poster making, ‘Happy Families’, interactive whiteboard games, mind-maps and guessing games. • Very little marking is required, as the activities lend themselves to being carried out in a group and outcomes can often be photographed or filmed for evidence. Planning, powerpoint and all paper resources are included. I hope you enjoy!

The resource includes photographs of 51 different instruments (common orchestral instruments and school percussion instruments) with their names underneath. The resource can be used in so many different ways and - if printed on card and laminated - it is a resource that can be used time and time again! Ideas for activities and uses: Matching the instrument to its name. Sorting /ordering according to different criteria, e.g instrument families, pitch of the sound, size of the instrument… Venn Diagram sorting, e.g. wood/metal, played with a beater/played by hand… Display or working wall labels. Music trolley/cupboard labels. Stimulus for a composition - assign or have pupils choose a number of instruments to incorporate in their piece. Provide pupils with a title for a piece of music, eg. ‘The Storm’ - what instruments might you use? Baseline/end-of-unit assessment task. Listening activity: play a piece of music and have pupils pick out the instruments that they can hear from the pile. As well as PDF, the resource is provided in Word format in case you want to edit the font or use a different name for a particular instrument. Thank you for looking and I hope this resource saves you some time!

This is a unit of work for music originally planned for Year 4, but I have used to great effect across KS2. It focuses on teaching pupils how to record their ideas more formally on paper, but also provides ample opportunity for children to listen carefully to well known pieces of music - mostly classical. It was originally planned in 2011, but has been updated to cover all aspects of the current musical curriculum. • Use and understand staff and other musical notations • Play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and playing musical instruments with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression. • Improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the interrelated dimensions of music. • Appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians. • Develop an understanding of the history of music. • Listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory. Key musical vocabulary covered includes: timbre; pitch; tempo; dynamics; rhythm and pulse. This resource includes: • Planning – linked to the current Music National Curriculum. • Presentation – in both Smart Notebook and Powerpoint format. • Videos – hyperlinked within the presentations. I was unable to upload this as a zipped folder so I am hoping that the hyperlinks work despite the fact I have had to upload the files separately. If not they will be quite quick to switch to manually. • Example of a simple graphic score produced by my class. • Blank 16 bar graphic grid for pupils (ideally photocopied onto A3). • Lesson 1 acts as a baseline assessment. In order to add a cross-curricular element, Session One can be easily adapted to suit current affairs or class topic, and Sessions Four and Five can be adapted to suit a text being studied in Literacy or Guided Reading (details given in planning). NOTE: Once downloaded, please save the video clips/music extracts and the PowerPoint in one folder together so that the hyperlinks on the PowerPoint can find the clips! **Musical instrument cards mentioned in Lesson 1 are not included in this resource and are not essential for the lesson (instruments can be allocated by the teacher or chosen by pupils rather than using the cards for random selection). Instrument cards are available to purchase separately from my shop if it is something you would like. ** Thank you for looking :)

A set of 30 cards, each featuring the name of a percussion instrument and an image of it. I printed these on card and laminated them and I have used them in many different ways; here are some examples: Sorting activities: encourage children to become more familiar with the instruments and calling them by the correct name by inviting them to sort them according to their own or pre-defined criteria, e.g. tuned/untuned, metal/wooden… Children select a card at the start of a lesson…this is the instrument they will be using (saves arguments and also prevents against six sets of cymbals crashing all lesson!) Use as labels for instruments in your music room or instrument store - great for music subject-leaders who are struggling to keep the cupboard tidy! Separate the names from the images and invite children to match the name to the correct instrument. Give children different themes for compositions and ask them to select the instruments that they think would be most suited to that theme and explain why, e.g. drums and cymbals for a storm composition.