Second week in

Our second week went very well, and we are delighted to have Alex Lewis helping out at Burradon Community Primary. Alex is a very experienced professional music tutor and is helping and mentoring our volunteers as part of his contract with North Tyneside Music Education Hub. He’s already given us a few good ideas which we have used successfully at the other schools.

This week the children and adults learnt about the notes C and G and how to shape the mouth and lips to play low or high. Not everyone can do it yet, but this will come with practice. The easiest note to play seems to be a low C, and everyone can play one or the other. Next week we’ll introduce E and then it might be easier to go up from E to G and down from E to C?

Everyone had a go at conducting to a beat of 4 – we found clapping and shouting the numbers 1, 2, 3 , 4 worked best, but very impressively some of our children were able to keep time even when the conductor stopped – they were counting in their head just like a musician should!

To make sure we can give each learner some individual attention, we’re breaking into smaller groups depending on the number of tutors we have. We’ve also done exercises where the children can pair up or get into 3s and take turns at the exercises.

We’ve also found it helps to have a sit-down rest and a drink half way through while listening to a short performance by the tutors. We then have a discussion about what was played and what people heard e.g. was it slow or fast, loud or quiet, high or low, how did it make you feel, what’s the difference between a cornet and a trombone?

A total 49 children attended, 5 parents, 5 teachers and 6 tutors.