Do re mi fa so la ti do

As a child, I hated music lessons. I found everything so confusing and constantly felt like a weak link in the class. Perhaps it was this feeling that made me lose interest in the subject in the later years of school, or perhaps, it was the fact my teacher and the lessons were boring.  

I don’t often toot my own horn but today I will. I love how confident my students have become in Music. I love that they love coming to my lessons. I love that I can sometimes learn with them and I love coming up with fresh ideas and activities.  

Although the lessons are in English, the children know the German names of the notes; they know how to identify different notes on a scale using their names, their beat and to use the letter notations to play a variety of tunes.  

They can also use their bodies to make music and have pretty much mastered moving to the beat (something usually pretty catastrophic with kids, I can tell you…).  

The point is, we always have fun together in these lessons and they may be my current favourite. The second point is, of course, that they are completely forgetting the fact they’re speaking a different language. Notes, scales, body percussion, letter notations… they’re the same in every language. With this in mind, I thought ‘Well, my kids know everything.’ Biased, of course. ‘Let’s try something new’.  

Implementing the concepts of CLIL while using the Lehrplan21, the children’s new challenge is to write their own biography of their favourite musical artist. This is interesting because they will face new challenges in English that they will need to use their developing skillset to conquer. For example, the children are using laptops to research their chosen artists, but they have to write their biography in English. They need to read and pick out key information from websites that are relevant to the questions they have been given – also in English.  

I’m feeling positive about this mission. I can’t wait to see how their biography turns out!  

Below are some examples of the children exploring different elements of the Music curriculum:

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