We began our new unit of music ‘Cat and mouse’ by warming up using a song called ‘Three little mice’. We used our bodies to create actions, as well as our voices to capture the characteristics of cats and mice.

To practise our listening and appraising skills, we watched a recording of ‘Duetto buffo di due gatti (cat duet)’ and shared our thoughts on what we liked or disliked about the performance, whether the singers used words, and how they communicated a message. We talked about how the characters told a story through the sound of a cat and used their bodies and voices to tell the story.

We then played a game called ‘The old grey cat’ to get us thinking about how cats and mice move. We listened to the audio and tried to make movements in time with the music before joining in with the singing.

We finished by listening to our song ‘What do you want to eat little mouse’. Once we had listened, we tried to clap the words whilst thinking about the lyrics carefully. We thought of some alternative lyrics for the song and had a go at using these lyrics to see what they sounded like alongside our clapping.

In our final lesson of our unit ‘Nautilus’, we began by following a listening map to warm our bodies up whilst thinking about how music can make shapes.

We then discussed opinions and how it was important to have your own opinion on something. We talked about how your opinions can be different to those of other people but both were valid. Not everyone will have the same opinion about a piece of music and that is okay.

The piece of music ‘Nautilus’ has been used to create different types of art, an animation, a ballet and an advertisement. We watched videos of each of these art forms and formed our own opinions on whether we liked the story that was being told. We discussed how even though the same piece of music was used in each, the videos and visuals helped to create a different story each time.

To finish, we had a vote on which one was our favourite. The winner was the ballet!

Continuing our work on ‘Nautilus’, we started by making large and small shapes with our bodies. This was a good activity to get us thinking about how music can make different shapes using different beats and length durations. We repeated this activity only this time we had to make a big shape, and become a small shape over 8 counts. We worked hard to make sure that we were all taking our time so that we all became smaller shapes at the same time. We then repeated this again, only this time we started as smaller shapes and we had to grow to become bigger shapes, again over 8 counts.

We then moved on to explore sounds as images and how the shapes used within the animated music video match closely with the sounds used within the piece of music. We noticed that the shapes at the beginning of the video looked like jaws opening and closing and they moved in time with the music.

We then looked at examples of music graphic scores and talked about how images and marks on a page might tell a story of how the music changes or how a piece of music is played and performed. We listened to ‘Nautilus’ again and created our own music graphic scores to match the sounds we could hear and the shapes we thought the music was making.

We began our next unit of music ‘Nautilus’ by learning all about the composer Anna Meredith. She composed the piece of music ‘Nautilus’ and her music covers lots of different styles. We listened to the music with our eyes closed whilst thinking of the following questions:

Whilst continuing to listen to the music, we explored feeling the beat using our bodies to move in time with the music. We listened carefully for any changes in the music and considered how we would use our bodies to show that change. We worked as a crew to follow a listening map that matched the music as it changed throughout.