Musical contexts is a website offering a complete music curriculum for Key Stage 2 and above. There is a one-off payment of £99 for a school forever. There are over 2000 resources available, many of which are KS3 and above. However for a one off payment of £20, a stand-alone KS2 pack can be acquired in school which look really useful. If a primary school wanted more than five packs, a one-off payment of £99 would work out cheaper and it would also give access to the complete warm-ups set:
“ Available as a ‘stand alone’ purchase, The Musical Contexts Complete Warm-Ups Compendium contains over 100 slides in the form of a PowerPoint presentation covering Singing/Vocal Warm-Ups, Tongue Twisters, Body Percussion and Clapping and Rhythm Game Warm-Ups complete with starting points, songs, scores and embedded audio and video files.” (Musical Contexts)
The history-based music units cover Ancient Egypt, exploring dynamics, texture and the harmonic minor scale, Ancient Greece – covering triple time, the pentatonic scale and the leitmotif. The Victorians explores street cries and music hall. Britain since 1930 explores the music of WW2 and The Tudors looks at music of the period.
To give some idea of what is covered in the various units there is a good explanation as you visit its topic page:
“Britain Since 1930 from Musical Contexts provides a range of fun and exciting music activities and learning opportunities combining singing, performing, composing and listening and appraising with all of the resources you’ll need in one place! Ideal for non-specialist music teachers (with a wealth of supporting media files to model tasks and a detailed scheme of work and lesson plans) and a wealth of fresh inspiration for music specialists. This unit has cross-curricular links with the popular primary history topic of World War II.
This unit explores musical styles in Britain during the 1930’s and 1940’s and focuses on music popular during the Second World War. Pupils begin by exploring songs which were popular during WWII investigating their melodic shape and how melodies can move by steps and leaps. Pupils then move onto explore how the stepwise movement of the Chromatic Scale can be used to reproduce the “sliding” sound of WWII Sirens and use this to create their own descriptive WWII soundscape. Pupils then move onto explore the instrumental genre of Swing Music and Big Bands, moving to a piece of Swing Music and exploring how Theme and Variations is used in a piece of Big Band Music.” (Musical Contexts)
There is so much offered on the above page that it looks to be an absolute gift for a non-music specialist; even for the music specialist, there is lots on offer.
There are free samples to study but for a one-off cost to a primary school Musical Contexts seems to be a very useful set of schemes of work for any school needing extra support in this area.
