Music teachers are bombarded with a multitude of resources and ideas on a daily basis and sometimes it’s hard to find a pathway through the white noise.
On this page I will be curating some of my favourite resources together with descriptions of how I have used them with my classes.
I will also be undertaking independent reviews of some of the products and resources out there to assess how those might be useful to music teachers in a variety of different Music Education contexts!
Please scroll down to explore what I hope will be a useful and growing bank of information for teachers.
Resource Review and Activities – Beat Goes On Body Beats
Resource Review and Activities – Body Beats: An Easy and Fun Guide to the Art of Body Percussion
A while ago I was sent a copy of Body Beats: An Easy and Fun Guide to the Art of Body Percussion with Video Access Included by Beat Goes On founder Ollie Tunmer (Hal Leonard 2020). I was excited to dip into this book because I have used body percussion in my teaching for many years. My approach has been amalgamated from various workshops, videos and my own ideas, usually to complement an existing activity or as a one-off warm up activity. I was interested to find ways to be more structured in planning for how I use body percussion to support progression and deeper musical learning, especially as I had become reliant on it as a tool for surviving long periods of online learning with students at home without access to a musical instrument. Click to read more…
Resource Review and Activities – Musical Futures Chair Drumming
Musical Futures International and Musical Futures UK both offer resources for chair drumming. This review focusses on the version that delegates are given for free when they attend a Musical Futures International workshop. However, the accompanying ideas are relevant regardless of which version of the resource you are using. Click to read more…
Resource Review and Activities – Cool4School
“Cool4School is a music resource for primary schools. Top quality, accessible, relatable, songs, spanning different genres. Reggae, Latin, African, Funk, Pop, Rock and much more”.
Children can learn to sing the songs, and/or follow the movements and start to really embody the groove as they learn. And boy do these songs groove…… Click to read more…
Resource Review and Activities – Rob’s Kitchen Music
Rob Kitchen, a fantastic practitioner with a wealth of experience working in schools and as a community musician, has started a YouTube Channel full of these during lockdown. Here he posts daily music activities using ‘found sounds’, body percussion, vocal percussion, cup songs and much much more. Click to read more…
Resource Review and Activities – Musication
Musication is a collection of video play alongs for boomwhackers, percussion, various melodic versions and you could sing along with the Do Re Mi versions as well. Versions with new layouts have also been added for home learning that are designed to use body percussion or junk percussion. Click to read more…
Anna Gower 