Were you once Third Lobster in the Nativity musical? Or a Von Trapp in the Sound of Music? Whatever your history, our guess is you remember the music of childhood through the clubs, assemblies, choirs, instrumental lessons and school performances that made it possible. Learn how Sing Education makes music magic.
Extracurricular music is the opportunity for music to pour out of the classroom and into the wider life of the school. Extracurricular music is the music most of us remember from school. It’s the assemblies, the school shows, the choirs and performances. And if you’ve ever seen the classic romantic comedies Love Actually, About a Boy or even 2019’s Wham! tribute hit, Last Christmas, you know exactly what we mean.
When built on a solid classroom music foundation, extracurricular music opportunities bring the vibrancy and joy of music-making to the heart of the school community. It’s an opportunity for children to make music and build relationships with children from other classes, year groups and peer groups and to nurture those friendships throughout the academic year. Extracurricular activities provide a framework for musical progression as well – a developmental opportunity where younger children can see from older pupils the outcomes and rewards of both hard work and practice.
Singing assemblies are a chance to unite the whole school community through singing. With a half an hour of corporate music-making, the benefits are numerous. Children develop a sense of belonging to a wider community. There are boosts to pupils’ emotional wellbeing, staff wellbeing and morale as well. It’s a great opportunity for Sing Education music teachers to become more widely known and embedded into the school community as assemblies are often such a focal point of school life.
Enriching after school and/or lunchtime clubs allow a school to offer a wide variety of musical activities to supplement and enhance their core curricular music provision. Clubs offer pupils the chance to focus on a particular area of music-making in a smaller group. They also provide a setting for children to develop their ensemble skills, which can then be shared with the school through performances. We frequently organise performances between schools – bringing together groups of schools from across the Sing Education network. A particularly popular ensemble activity is to unite choirs from different schools or classes from different schools to come together and share what they’ve learnt through a mass choir performance.
Instrumental and singing lessons are a great way for children to explore their music-making in a more focused setting, giving children the opportunity to deepen their musicianship and to experience the joy and satisfaction that comes from learning an instrument or singing. It might take place as one-to-one tuition or in small groups of five to six students – but whatever the format, instrumental music lessons are an important part of the music education programme in many of our schools. We offer a number of instruments such as guitar, recorder and keyboard and ensure that instrumental lessons are joined up seamlessly with our curricular teaching.
