Year 3 Music Presentation

Throughout Year 3, pupils are taught to play a musical instrument. Mrs Helen Ronald, from Luton Music Service, is the woodwind specialist who visits our school every week to teach the chilodren to play the recorder. This also includes learning musical notation and vocabulary.

The children are loaned a recorder for the year which they can take home and practise what they have learned in class. Indeed, many families buy a recorder for their child. Decent recorders are not at all expensive – under ten pounds in fact.

The children are all given a login code to a website that contains all the backing tracks for the tunes that they learn in class.

The children all enjoy taking part in something called Recorder Karate. The scheme is a series of songs that the children learn on the recorder that get progressively more difficult. After each song that they have completed correctly, they receive a “karate belt” with a corresponding colour. These belts are neatly plaited strands of wool that the children can tie onto the bottom of their recorder. There are approximately fifteen different colours for the children to work through. As you watch the videos below, you will see the Recorder Karate belts tied to their instruments

On Friday 12 July, all four classes gave a marvellous presentation of their learning in music. They played around ten tunes chosen to show how their learning progresses from the start of Year 3 until the end of the school year.

The Year 3 classes were delighted with the turn-out of parents who came to school to hear them play. Fortunately we were able to record the performance, giving all parents, as well as any other visitors to our website, the opportunity to hear the children playing.

1. B B Blues

One of the first tunes the children learn – played all on one note – B – which only requires one finger and one thumb to play.

2. Thinking

When the children have mastered playing a B, then a new note is introduced – A – which requires two fingers and a thumb to play.

3. Stripey Cat Crawl

Now the children know two notes – A and B – they can put them together in the same tune.

4. Totally Blessed

A third note is introduced – C – and this tune is another one that uses two notes: A and C

5. Hot and Cross

If the children know three notes, why only play tunes with two notes? Here’s a tune that uses B, A and G.

6. Call Me When You Can

Here we can see the children adding voice sounds to their recorder playing.

7. Playing Recorder

Here we can see the children adding voice sounds to their recorder playing.

8. Dan's Dog

9. Two-Way Radio

Special Guests: Year 5 Clarinet players

Mrs Ronald also teaches clarinet lessons to three pupils currently in Year 5. They started to learn the recorder when they were in Year 3 and took the opportunity to move on to the clarinet when they moved into Year 4. They have all passed Grade 1 and they joined in the Year 3 Music Presentation to give three solo recitals of pieces they are learning for their Grade 2 exam.