A Sing Education classroom is truly alive with the sound of music. Our focus is active music making. Students learn through diverse activities including rhyming games, glockenspiel, folk songs, etc. Teachers incorporate different learning modalities such as call and response, Powerpoint and multisensory techniques. No one day is like another.
One of the first things you notice about a Sing Education curricular lesson is…the pupil’s genuine excitement. Because of the diverse ways we engage students – singing games, percussion, rhymes, rhythm activities, glockenspiel and more – our primary learners are keen to jump into the lesson and make music together with us. We don’t focus on just one activity or just one outcome for too long, we keep the lesson progressing through a variety of milestones. We also incorporate PowerPoint technology and multisensory techniques to support the learning as well.
You’ll also notice that each moment in the lesson is planned and executed with purpose. And that’s because every lesson is part of a wider Scheme of Work that we’ve written. So it might be part of a theme, like music around the world. It might be part of a theme such as exploring classical music. But we’re still doing that through singing games, through active music making.
Typical day, you ask?
Well for many Sing Education teachers, the day begins about 8:30am with you joining other staff for a school-wide briefing, updating the music timetable for a special assembly or simply preparing for your first lesson of the day. You might then have 3 or 4 curriculum lessons up until lunchtime. Then you’d look forward to another lesson perhaps, followed by ukulele club, a singing for pleasure club and finally a school choir rehearsal to round out the afternoon. Because of the inclusive nature of our provision, there may be the inclusion of something like a special educational needs and disabilities club, SEND club or SEND group, as well.
Even new joiners quickly settle into a comfortable routine – as we assign you to a school on a particular day of the week and that would stay the same throughout the academic year. So we don’t chop and change across the term between teachers and schools. So while you might be moving between schools from day to day, your overall timetable is fixed. We find this produces a real camaraderie between you and your fellow teaching staff, as well as provides scheduling simplicity for you as a busy working musician. It gives you the security to fit other professional commitments around your teaching.
