Enlivening the primary curriculum through song – Sing Up launches new membership package
Enlivening the primary curriculum through song
– Sing Up launches new membership package featuring best practice videos and digital on-demand training
Twenty engaging best practice videos designed to help primary teachers enliven the curriculum through song and on-demand training services, form just two of the ‘must have’ features of Sing Up’s improved membership package, launched today. These latest additions to Sing Up’s resource material will also give primary school teachers throughout the UK greater control over their personal career development.
Sing Up, providers of complete singing solutions to enhance learning in the classroom, is placing a renewed focus on support for singing as an integrated element of learning and teaching across the curriculum, with a particular emphasis on maintaining high quality standards.
”It’s all about putting more educational rigour behind music education to help teachers to teach in a really effective and engaging way”, says Shelly Ambury, Sing Up’s head of learning. “We are really ramping things up a gear. Singing is great fun, but it’s also a lot more than that and can really help pupils learn and is particularly effective for language development and numeracy skills.”
In terms of child development, the benefits of music education - and singing specifically - are well documented. As well as supporting increased brain activity, singing also helps improve children’s skills in less obvious ways including team working, creative thinking, organisational abilities, self esteem and self discipline. Children really can sing themselves to a better future.
The 20 new films being added to Sing Up’s online digital video bank cover three areas - vocal leadership, musical learning and developing choirs - and feature some of the UK’s most inspirational and renowned musical leaders, conductors and composers. These include Sue Hollingsworth, musical director of the award-winning Scunthorpe Co-operative Junior Choir and 2010 Choirmaster of the Year; Lin Marsh, sought-after composer specialising in children’s voices; Richard Frostick, founder and director of the Islington Music Centre and an Ofsted inspector; and Doug Bott who specialises in leading music for children with learning disabilities .
Featured alongside these music specialists are some inspirational classroom teachers, sharing their best practice and experiences of what can be achieved using Sing Up. These include head teacher Miles Wallis-Clarke from Hotspur Primary in Newcastle upon Tyne and Nicola Hadley from Yerbury Primary School in Camden, London.
A similarly impressive cast of musical training experts feature in Sing Up webinars, the interactive training sessions which make up the second tranche of Sing Up’s enhanced membership package. Launching on May 15, this series of webinars – interactive training sessions led by musical training experts, recorded live and streamed over the internet – will allow teachers to watch and take part from a location to suit them, be that at their school or home, in groups or alone. Teachers watching remotely can join in the discussions and brainstorms, as well as take part in a Q&A at the end. Each webinar will run conveniently at the end of the school day, from 4-5pm, followed by a 30 minute Q&A opportunity.
The May session is on ‘Outdoor Learning’ and will be led by singer/songwriter Beccy Owen. It will focus on singing as a tool to support learning in an outdoor classroom, including links with the science, PSHE and history curricula and will highlight ways in which teachers can use Sing Up’s repertoire of songs to enhance and enliven these subject areas.
Then in late September the topic will be ‘Singing to Support Behaviour’, led by Beth Allen, an expert on helping children with emotional and behavioural difficulties channel their energies into singing. Finally in November comes, ‘Get your children ready for Christmas’ which will offer teachers a great repertoire of songs and ideas for something new and different around a variety of winter celebrations. More details on these webinars can be found at www.singup.org/nextwebinar
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