2022-24 Year 5 Blog

 We spent some time today revisiting the chorus from last week and spotting when that is being played.  We then focussed on the verses - linking to the idea of a sea storm we had a sea monster, a band of pirates and some calmness (the clam before the storm perhaps!). Children then had to illustrate these on their original storm picture. 

 Taking our Work of Benjamin Britten’s The Storm a little further, we listened to the piece again and began to notice a phrase that was repeated at various times - this being the chorus.  With the spoken phrase ‘Here comes a wave’ we had to think of ways to adapt this in small groups using pitched and unpatched instruments. Despite it being very ‘noisy’, we had some great compositions for our chorus. Next week we will be looking at parts in between.  Well done Year 5 - some very creative ideas!

 This half term Y5 will be working through a series of lessons through BBC Ten Pieces.  They are focussing on the composer Benjamin Britton, who is the first and only British composer to be made a Baron. The piece of music they are working on is The Storm, which happens to be an interlude from the opera Peter Grimes - a lonely fisherman. This week, they listened to the music and illustrated it in a way that is representing the music.

 Today Year 5 began to bring their learning together to create their graphic scores of their chosen air craft - they could choose a hot air balloon, passenger plane, red jet or hand glider. They had to think about the journey from take-off, flying and finally landing.  Children were encouraged to write a key for their symbols and to be creative with sounds that they might hear. Are the sounds soft or loud, when the craft travels slow or fast, and whether the sounds are high or low.  Next week they will play their composition using a range of tuned and untuned percussion instruments.

 Year 5 worked hard this afternoon on exploring graphic scores and how they work. They listened to The Flight of the Bumblebee and we talked about what parts of the music they thought represented the bee. They then had to choose either a bee or a bird (a hawk, a robin or a parrot) to write their own graphic scores demonstrating the flight of their chosen creature. Next week they will try using instruments to play their compositions.

 We began our lesson today by listening to a variety of aircraft taking off - from an aircraft carrier to a Vulcan and a helicopter to a 747. The children had to listen carefully and try to find the point where the aircraft actually left the ground - quite a challenge but they did surprising well!  They were then asked to try and do their own version of this using their voices. Interestingly, one class focused more on the helicopter while the other class focused on planes.  We then moved on to looking at what we mean by dynamics and practice using our hands to make a noise of a sound being distant to loud to distant as if a plane was flying past. This worked well with some conducting of speed and volume. 

We spent the first lesson of our music curriculum exploring some of the musical terminology that the children will hear during our unit of work. We discovered a few of the words we might hear in science or could have other meanings such as ‘pitch’. After exploring the meanings and other uses and meanings, we looked at synonyms and then wrote down ideas to help us remember the meaning and understanding of the word. Some drew pictures. Some great creative ideas we shared - well done Year 5!