Tag Archives: School Music

Music, Year 6

Year 6 Leavers Song

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It’s the time of year where we begin to plan our Year 6 leavers’ assembly and this year we’ve written our own song based on the song Six from the hit West End musical of the same name. Originally written by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, Six tells the story of the six wives of Henry VIII using modern pop music and it’s really rather wonderful.

Some of our year 6 children are fans of the production and one of their parents came up with the idea of turning the title track into a Year 6 tribute. So she set to work on it and did a great job (shout out to Donna Giles). I then played with it a little bit more and put it to the music.

Below you can find the full version with the kids singing using a karaoke backing track from YouTube. After that is my original acoustic attempt. These are the lyrics.

Full version with Karaoke backing
Acoustic version – 1st 3 verses and chorus

If you want to play it on the guitar, you can find the chords on Ultimate-Guitar.com.

You’ll find our lyrics on this Google Doc, please feel free to use them to make your own version.

This is last year’s leavers’ song based on Shotgun by George Ezra
Music, Singing Assemblies

Singing Assemblies

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We really missed our Singing Assemblies while they were restricted by COVID-19, but now they are back and it’s glorious. Some schools like to go down the traditional route of songs that I have been sung for decades in British schools. Personally, I prefer to pick modern songs that the have a positive message and might be more familiar to our children. The children respond by absolutely singing their hearts out.

I’ve compiled this massive Google sheet of some of the tried and tested songs with video links to original videos, karaoke versions and lyric videos that can all be used in singing assemblies. If you have any recommendations that I should add to the list, please put them in the comments.

Many of the songs included on the list come from recommendations from other teachers on Twitter. As we’re not a church school I’ve not included any of the many songs suggested to me with religious meaning. I hope the songs included can be used by schools whether they are faith schools or not. It’s just a list of songs that children love to sing.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom during lockdown, we kept going with Virtual Singing Assemblies for people to join in with whether they were at home or in school. You can find them here in all their random glory.

I use this PowerPoint as part of our Cultural Assemblies every week. It’s a great way of sharing high quality recording artists from all over the world with the children. The music is from different time periods and genres and is played while the children are arriving, I then give them a little history about the artists.

Music, Ready, Respectful and Safe

Ready, Respectful and Safe song

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I’ve always been a bit wary of playing my guitar in school as it feels like it can get a bit cringey and David Brent when you inflict your music on other people. Conversely, I also think it’s important to share your passions with the children and music is such a powerful and enjoyable form of expression I do try to include it where I can.

As part of my role of music lead, this year we will be recording a school album. We have done this before, but this time we will be recording and producing it ourselves, any profit will be returned to the school and can be reinvested in music education for our children. Each class will sing a their own songs as well as some whole school songs and a couple solos.

This seemed like the perfect opportunity to write and record our own school song! So I got writing. We have 3 simple school rules of being, ‘Ready, Respectful and Safe’ so that became the theme of the song. The idea is to explore the meanings of these words a bit more and to be used as a reference point throughout school when talking to children.

You may not be surprised to know that these 3 rules were inspired by the excellent book ‘When the Adults Change Everything Changes‘, by Paul Dix. Simplifying to these 3 school rules has had a really positive impact for both children and adults in our school. Previously we had 7 learning behaviours and 7 learning values and no one could really remember what they all were or what they meant. Ready, respectful and safe seems to cover everything and is simple enough to remember, especially with a catchy song!

Ready, Respectful and Safe by Sidlesham Primary School

To find the lyrics here and feel free to use them to make your own Ready, Respectful and Safe song for your school. Although a credit would be appreciated and if your making money out of it, I’d like a cut!

Music, Young Voices

Lifting our Young Voices

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The single best thing I have been involved with as a teacher is taking my choir to Young Voices. Everyone involved comes in to school the next day still buzzing with excitement. Very tired, but very excited.

The children have a wonderful experience to perform at an iconic venue, like the O2 Arena, which is pretty cool. Furthermore, they get to perform with professional musicians, singers and dancers of an impressively high standard. This is an experience which will inspire and motivate the children and will live long in the memory. There are some really magical moments where you catch the children staring, open mouthed, as Natalie Williams begins to sing or Urban Strides are dancing. I like to think I can do a pretty good singing assembly, but this is a whole different level of inspiration.

Parents also came back having had an amazing evening of entertainment. This is not your average children’s concert, this is one you will really enjoy and you will get up and dance. Everyone does, you simply can’t help it. My mum and sister recently went to watch my niece at one of this year’s Birmingham shows and phoned me as soon as they came out, both full of excitement about what they had just witnessed.

For the teachers it’s a long day, and I’ve never been more alert than when leaving the O2 in the rain trying to repeatedly count children making sure everyone gets safely back to the coach. However, it’s a whole lot of fun. We sang, we danced, we conquered. All the staff involved loved it, and that cannot be said for every school trip or concert.

The shows are expertly put together by, Musical Director, Craig McLeish, who always meets the challenge of compiling and arranging a collection of songs to appeal to all ages pulling from a range of genres.

Here are some tips if you are thinking of taking your choir to a Young Voices event next year.

  • Go to the teacher’s workshop. It helpful and loads of fun.
  • As well as taking a banner, take some form of headwear that will help your choir stand out. Helpful for getting noticed as the audience enter the arena, also very helpful when leaving the arena safely at the end.
  • Encourage the parents to also have someway of drawing attention to themselves. The children love to know where their parents are and it is not an easy task.
  • Take water bottles to regularly refill.
  • Rehearse loads. Add your own dance moves.
  • Perfection is great. However, if it is unattainable for you and your choir, make fun the priority. You may not get all of the moves exactly right, but enjoy expressing yourselves through the music. The more fun the children have the more they are likely to be hooked by the performance bug.

What led me to Young Voices?

Music simply isn’t taught as much in schools as it should be. Music is so important for the soul and mind and the fact it gets squeezed out in place of extra SPaG lessons is a travesty. But it does. I know it’s not the only hard done by subject but it’s one I care about immensely so I will bang the literal and figurative drum for music lessons all day long.

The two main reasons, as far as I can tell, for music taking a back seat in modern schools are the congested curriculum and teacher confidence in delivering good quality music lessons. Both of these excuses are able to be overcome with will-power and enthusiasm, which has helped me increase music participation in my school in whole class lessons, individual tuition, clubs and school productions.

While I feel I’ve had some success in this area, I recognise this to be a national problem. I also fully understand the pressures on teachers to get results in the core subjects of reading, writing, maths and science, so explicit music teaching is not a priority. This being the case, I am always on the look out for opportunities for our children to perform and experience music at it’s best. I has previously written about how we recorded an album with the whole school and the impact it had, making use of ICT to help engagement and also given tips for putting on productions. The search for more new and exciting experiences for our children led me to Young Voices and I am very happy with the experiences I have had with them so far. No doubt I’ll be signing up to do it all again very soon.