Lean into Sing Education’s consulting expertise, cross-school collaborations and classroom management success to create a bespoke vision for music in your school. See how we work with you to improve provision, evidence pupil progression and tackle tough teaching challenges. Whatever your need, we can help.
One of the ways that Sing Education differentiates our music provision is that we actively provide consultancy support throughout each engagement to help schools deliver a bespoke music and singing strategy. We work closely with each school to put this strategy in place and to embed the school’s vision for music.
We start by looking at the current provision in place and how this can be further developed or refined. We sit down with the school and analyse what they’re already doing – and to offer solutions they might implement to improve this. One way, of course, is to utilise Sing Education staff on site. The second, and powerfully complementary approach, is to utilise Sing Education’s consultancy expertise to augment or reframe your current provision.
For instance, we might work alongside your internal music coordinator or class teachers themselves to ensure that music provision is unified and works across the board. That includes everything from curricular music to choirs, clubs, SEN groups, instrumental tuition, singing assemblies and more. We collaboratively develop bespoke progression maps and schemes of work, which represent the programme’s medium and long-term planning. These tools are also great for reporting – for class teachers to develop reports and updates for parents on what the children have been learning.
But, most importantly, these tools enable us to track the progress of pupils which can subsequently be used for Ofsted planning. Our progression maps and schemes of work allow schools to clearly demonstrate that their music curriculum is progressive and is in line with the new framework. We can also introduce additional recordkeeping elements when appropriate. For example, in some schools, we have charted records of ‘pupil voice’ to monitor what children are remembering from their learning in the classroom so that if Ofsted comes in to do a deep dive on music, we have evidence of logging pupil progression over time.
Sing Education also takes pride in our prioritisation of knowledge pooling and best practice sharing across schools.
Each week our teachers teach over 9,000 music students. This means that our curriculum, methodologies and teaching resources are deployed in a wide variety of academic settings across Greater London. This enables us to draw together the experiences of all of our practitioners across all of our schools and to feed back their ideas and input into our broader planning cycles. Our expertise in consultancy means that when particular questions are raised or when we are posed with a challenge which a school needs help solving, we can look across industry, across geographies and across schools to determine the best practices to implement.
Using knowledge gained from teaching across our large network of schools, we also provide consultancy on practical matters such as timetabling, PPA cover and equipment. For example, we can help schools equip a new music room from soup to nuts or to redesign an existing space to work better for the children
In the first instance, we’ll always look together at space planning and organisation. including needs for seating, storage, message boards, etc.. Once the music curriculum and extracurricular programming are agreed, we also happily assist schools in purchasing and sourcing instruments. To that end, we also assist you in keeping an audit of the equipment you already have on hand so you avoid expensive duplication.
Lastly, we provide some technology and equipment directly into schools, such as projectors, PAs and sound systems. These are often used during singing assemblies, end of term performances and afterschool clubs. So, whether we’re making provision for teaching music in the hall or fully kitting out a dedicated music classroom, Sing Education will use our schools’ network and years of experience to help you take the best route forward.
Complementing our consulting experience and knowledge pooling, we also deliver a great classroom experience for learners. At Sing Education we use proven classroom management techniques to help our teachers create a positive atmosphere for learning.
All our lessons include defined routines for the children, so we ensure our teachers understand the importance of and are well-trained to keep this routine. For instance, starting from the very beginning of the lesson, we train teachers to conduct the class welcome in the same order and in the same way. We do this so that the children feel safe and secure. Through our years of classroom practice, as well as research evidence, we know children respond well to structure and consistency. So even something as small as “Hello” presents an opportunity to encourage a positive and safe atmosphere.
That said, we also have a star musician system in place to reinforce positive learning and behaviour. Each lesson, children are chosen as star musician for the following week. Students who achieve this designation have demonstrated really positive behaviour and are proud to have that highlighted to their peers. We look broadly at positive behaviour; it isn’t all about excellence in singing or strong musicality. Positive behaviour includes following school rules, following instructions, taking a turn really confidently, helping a classmate. And when these actions are done alongside good personal comportment, star musician status becomes a natural way to reinforce key behaviours during lessons. In particular, we focus on naming the children and naming the positive behavior they have done – this is called positive behavior cuing. Our teaching style uses both positive behavior reinforcement, as well as authoritative behavior cuing to create a controlled and safe environment.
Lastly, we always use positive behavior language to show the children what’s expected of them. We use positive language to give them strong cues to behave in the way we’re asking, rather than focusing on negative behavior that we don’t wish to see repeated. We also find power in naming the child, using children’s names. Even with some of our teachers teaching up to 600 children a week, all of our staff make learning children’s names the absolute highest priority. We know that when we address a child using their name, they feel known and they recognize that the teacher cares for them. It develops a sense of trust and safety between the pupil and the teacher. This allows for a much more positive learning environment and a positive working relationship between pupil and teacher.
