Crew Hamill and Crew Thompson – Music

16th April 2024Sarah Mcglone

We have continued our work on ‘Latin Dance’ this week by recapping information about Cuban music and how it is influenced. We then practised finding and maintaining a 2-3 clave rhythm, and a 3-2 clave rhythm using untuned percussion instruments. We then applied these rhythms to some traditional Cuban pieces of music.

We practised our piece ‘Latin Dance’, reviewing the lyrics and reminding ourselves of the structure of the piece. We noticed that there were two instrumental parts within the song and we decided to create our own Cuban rhythms to add to the existing instrumental parts.

Once we were happy with our rhythms, we practised the song as a whole, making sure that we were following our conductor to make sure we kept in time with each other and the backing track.

Crew Hamill, Crew Thompson and Crew Mcloughlin – French

14th April 2024Sarah Mcglone

During this lesson, we used our knowledge of French numbers up to 12 to play French outdoor games on the playground! We discussed the French for common phrases such as your turn, my turn, winner, and miss a turn before heading out!

First, in small groups we had to use a diagram to draw out our game area. This game ‘la marelle’ was similar to hopscotch. We used chalk to draw out the game area before taking it in turns to throw the rock to a number. We had to call out the number 1 in French before skipping to the end of the grid ‘le ciel’ (the sky), coming back to ‘la terre’ (the earth) and collecting the rock to pass on to the next person, saying à toi (your turn). The next person then had to throw the rock on to the next number and repeat the same process. If the player did not roll the rock onto the correct number they had to shout ‘manque’ to show they were missing a turn. The winner ‘gagne’ was the first person to accurately throw the rock to number 10 and move along the game area to get to ‘le ciel’.

Crew Hamill, Crew Thompson and Crew Mcloughlin – French

14th April 2024Sarah Mcglone

This lesson we were looking at the skill of being able to read numbers 1-12 in French.

We used word cards for the numbers 1-12 to try and put them in the correct order.

We then discussed how to talk about and ask ‘how many?’ in French. We practised our pronunciation and understanding by turning over unknown picture cards and asking ‘Il y a combien?’ after counting in French, our partner then had to find the corresponding written number card to create a pair.

Crew Hamill, Crew Thompson and Crew Mcloughlin – French

14th April 2024Sarah Mcglone

In French we have been looking at how to say our ages, as well as ask other people how old they are. We started by becoming language detectives, identifying areas of French that we already knew or could find cognates/near cognates for within a letter. We discussed what we could find out from the letter and key questions that had been asked. This helped us with working out particular phrases useful to our lesson.

We then looked at how to say ‘I am ____ years old’ in French. We added an amount of candles to the image on the board and practised the pronunciation of the phrase ‘J’ai _____ ans’. We then looked at how to ask someone how old they are in French before asking and answering the questions using our new French knowledge.

We then played some games where we had to listen carefully to either our teacher or our crew members to identify what they were telling us.

Crew Hamill and Crew Thompson – Music

14th April 2024Sarah Mcglone

We continued with our work on ‘Latin Dance’ by learning about Cuban music and where it gets its influences from. We discussed how it uses a special rhythm called the clave rhythm and we used untuned percussion instruments to find the clave rhythm to a song called ‘El manisero (The Peanut Vendor)’.

We then used glockenspiels to practise the A minor and F major chords. Our final performance is going to be a whole class arrangement of ‘Latin Dance’ so we practised adding the chords in alongside singing the lyrics with the backing track. We thought about what we needed to do to make it even better during the next lesson!

Crew Hamill and Crew Thompson – Music

14th April 2024Sarah Mcglone

As part of our snapshot, we recapped a song called ‘Tongo’. We warmed our voices up using an activity called ‘Plasticine Person’ We then practised performing the song using a call-and-response technique. Once we had mastered the structure, we added in a drone using the note D on a glockenspiel alongside our singing.

Pentatonic scale

28th March 2024Kate Thompson

In expedition, we used our music knowledge and discussed the pentatonic scale. The pentatonic scale is a scale with 5 notes that are, C, D, E, G, A. We then used an interactive xylophone to practice using the pentatonic scale to play some different phrases.

Practicing our song!

28th March 2024Kate Thompson

In our expedition lesson, we were musicians and practiced sing the song “What a wonderful world”. We had to make sure we were singing in tune but we did find that keeping to the tempo and beat of the music tricky in some parts.

Citizenship crew

28th March 2024Kate Thompson

This week we unpicked what habits we have. We decided whether these were good habits or bad habits and then looked at how we could improve these habits! We have some great habits such as reading to calm down, going swimming each week and listening to music but we definitely need to improve some bad habits like picking our finger nails.