Year 3 pentatonic compositions

Year 3 have created some sensational work this half term. We have been studying pentatonic scales. We used the book "The Magic Paintbrush" by Julia Donaldson,( author of the Gruffalo) as our inspiration for our compositions. It is a beautiful book with the most exquisite illustrations by Joel Stewart and published by McMillian books. The company have very kindly allowed me to reproduce the images we used as inspiration for our work.



Please have a listen and let us know what you think of our work! Michael Rosen the author has had a listen to all of the clips and sent me a message saying how fabulous the work is and praising the children for their creativity! He said on twitter that this is "wonderful stuff" and what is more he sent a message to all of his followers telling them to have a listen to our work!

"Galloping Horses" written and performed by Bobby, Milan, Juzmin & Sergio

listen to ‘Galloping horse’ on Audioboo

"Jolly Melody" composed and performed by Courtney, Selin, Sosan, Alysha & Robina

listen to ‘Jolly melody’ on Audioboo

"Heartbreak" -

listen to ‘Heartbreak’ on Audioboo

"Angry Emperor" composed and performed by Isaac, Ilja & Hussain.

listen to ‘Angry Emperor’ on Audioboo

"Magic Paintbrush" composed and performed by Danielle, Dhivyah, Justin, Shyloe & Suveyda. This group worked exceptionally well together. Each person made an important contribution.

listen to ‘Magical Paintbrush’ on Audioboo

"Joy" composed and performed by Muneeb, Daniel & Sienna

listen to ‘"Joy"’ on Audioboo

This is just a selection of all the work we produced but I hope it has given you a flavour of the fantastic work these talented children are creating. Next week we are going to be evaluating our work and I hope to post up some of the children's evaluations. In the meantime if you could leave us a comment in the box below that would be fantastic!

Hello St Teresa's choir!

I enjoyed watching your rehearsal tonight!
I know that your teacher would love you to watch these two clips.





Maybe we could set up a special choir blog for you to use. What do you think? If you are a choir member and would be interested in becoming a blogger come and see me or leave me a message on any of my St Teresa blogs.

10 things I learned at MusicLearningLive!

1. Rt Hon Ed Vaisey, doesn't 'get' the transformative power of music (hence its absence from the EBACC)

2. Jude Kelly from the South Bank Centre does.

3. Mayor of london's cultural youth person thinks the failure of music education is due to trendy lefty teaching ideas of being "nice" to kids

4. Sue Beckett knows a million and one things to do with boomwhackers.

5. A margarine tub makes a great ukele. See the Utterly Butterly project

6. You don't play claves by randomly bashing them together. Thank you Andy Gleadhill

7. Sing up early bird discount ends 26 th March - hurray Jackie hurray, SIGN UP NOW!

8 Cliff Manning, Jonathon Westrup, Marc Jaffrey and David Ashworth are even nicer in real life than they are on twitter.

9. Tomorrow's Warriors rock! Fantastic performance.

10. Music matters.

Thank you Music Education UK for my ticket and thank you Justin for letting me attend. Have a great day if you are attending tomorrow and let me know what I missed.

Pete Churchill workshop -ArtsBeat2012

Had the most fantastic day with Pete Churchill. It was a really joyous event which involved us all both physically and emotionally. Pete showed us that singing doesn't simply happen from the neck up but is a deeply rooted process that connects us to all sorts of physical actions.

Ed, Flavio and Soo were on hand and shared their special talents with us.

Would heartily recommend taking part to anyone. As well as being a talented composer Pete is an amazing educator and starts from the premise we are all hard wired for music.

Have a listen to a couple of songs we learnt.



Big thanks to Soo and MMF for organising.

Official mascot dance for London 2012 Olympics

Need to learn this so i can teach the children of Poplar for an Olympic opening ceremony.

Am planning to start teaching national anthems. Here are 10 facts you may not know about national anthems - fromThe Telegraph

A song for Merton! Olympic Anthems by kids

I have been working with Key Stage 2 classes at St Teresa's to compose a song for Merton to celebrate the Olympics. I have never tought songwriting before and was extremely apprehensive. However Soo from MMF provided a set of lesson plans complete with video clips. This gave me the confidence to set up a song writing blog for the children - see "How to write a great song!"

The children have absolutely relished it. They have put in so much effort - practising at home, meeting up at playtimes, hounding me in the corridors etc!

It was really hard but I have whittled them down to a shortlist of 8. Please could you help me out by listening to them and leaving a comment on your favourites?

I would be pathetically grateful and you would make the children extremely happy!

Just click here