Jimmy Rotheram, Feversham Primary School and the Benedetti Foundation have teamed up to design accessible, easy to use, high-quality music lessons to offer to children despite the current COVID-19 restrictions.
Jimmy Rotheram is a music teacher at Feversham Primary School in Bradford whose work in the last few years has made him one of the UK’s top thought leaders in the musical education of young children.
Both Jimmy and the Benedetti Foundation hear time and time again from primary school teachers saying they feel unprepared and lack the confidence to teach music. To help address this, Jimmy has created new lesson plans and resources for teaching music to children aged 4 – 11, which have been edited and developed by the Benedetti Foundation.
The main aim is to help primary teachers to get music into their education setting. The videos have been created so that they lead the activity in the classroom, but once teachers have viewed them a few times and built some confidence they can have a go at leading it themselves. The resources are adaptable and usable by teachers everywhere in the world and do not follow any particular curriculum.
The resources on offer consist of:
- 6 weeks of lesson plans for ages 4 – 7
- 12 weeks of lesson plans for ages 7 – 11
- Books with all the lesson plans and resources are free to download here
- Videos for each activity led and created by some of the foremost music workshop leaders in the UK.
- Two playlists on YouTube, Primary School Music at Home 1 (aimed at 4–7 year olds) and Primary School Music at Home 2 (aimed at 7–11 year olds)
Teaching Primary Music: ages 4 – 7
In music the pulse is the heartbeat and the thing driving the music forward and making people want to move. This set of six lessons allows children to feel and move to a pulse before introducing the word and beginning to understand it as a concept.
● Lesson 1 & 2: Feel the Beat
● Lesson 3 & 4: Walk to the Beat
● Lesson 5 & 6: Prepare the Beat and Pulse
Teaching Primary Music: ages 7 – 11
As teachers work through these twelve lessons with their class, everyone will learn and explore the musical concepts pulse, tempo and rhythm – the three essential foundation blocks of music. Through fun activities and games, the children will start to embed these concepts and there are also opportunities to compose and lead too!
● Lesson 1: Feel the Beat
● Lesson 2: Responding to Music
● Lesson 3 & 4: Preparing the Pulse
● Lesson 5: Practising the Pulse
● Lesson 6 & 7: Presenting the Rhythm
● Lesson 8, 9, 10 & 11: Practising the Rhythm and Preparing Tempo
● Lesson 12: assessment
Rotheram comments, ‘I'm absolutely delighted to see this work being brought to life in such a wonderful way by my friends at the Benedetti Foundation, and hope that we can get this out to as many schools and teachers that need it.