Primary Music Magazine
Issue 3.1 Spring 2019
Composing and the National Curriculum
Dr Liz Stafford gives her advice on interpreting the requirements for composing at KS1 and KS2 Composing is one of the areas that teachers - both generalist and specialist - consistently request help with, and topped our recent reader poll of areas you’d like to see covered in this magazine. So what are the National Curriculum requirements for composing in England, and how do we interpret them?
KEY STAGE ONE At KS1 the word composing isn’t even mentioned. Helpful, huh? The statement relating to the skill of composing is:
‘experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the interrelated dimensions of music’
I find it helpful to split this statement into three different skills. First children must ‘experiment’ – for me this means just finding out what noises they can make with their voices, bodies, and different instruments. Then they must ‘select’ – make considered choices about the sounds that they use, for example picking a suitable instrument to represent rainfall, or using a vocal sound linked to an emotion like ‘sad’ or ‘angry.’ The next stage is to be able to ‘combine’ sounds and this is the tricky part because, in my experience at least, KS1 children are not generally known for their excellent skills of cooperation! The success of combining sounds with others can be more governed by social and emotional development than it is by musical development, so splitting the skills out in this way allows you to show that a child can actually be quite good at experimenting with and selecting sounds, even if they are not great at collaborating with others to combine them.
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