Wellerman - Transition Project:
Teacher Notes

Rationale

These resources are based on Wellerman – the sea shanty made popular by Nathan Evans and can be found HERE 

The materials are organised into a wide range of activities suitable for instruments that are typically available in primary classrooms. All the musical activities contain instructions for suggested use should be accessible by any student or teacher, regardless of musical expertise and experience.

The rationale behind this project is to strip away some of the complexities and inconsistencies surrounding transition/transfer from Year 6–Year 7. It uses music to bridge the transition divide, with a focus on developing then building upon the instrumental/vocal skills and experiences of the students. The emphasis is on encouraging and enthusing students to collaborate practically to perform a piece of music that should be familiar to them.

The project is designed to be accessible to anyone from a non-specialist classroom primary teacher to heads of music in secondary schools. The materials are suitable for primary teachers with little or no musical experience, skills and knowledge, as well as more experienced classroom music teachers, primary music specialists or visiting practitioners. How you approach this depends entirely on how music operates in the school, the skills and abilities of your students and the resources and time you have available.

Aims

1. To ensure familiarity and consistency for Year 7 students in their new school environments, as they will work immediately on a piece of music that they are already familiar with, and will experience this practically from the inside out through a whole-class approach to music learning
2. To provide a mechanism for secondary teachers to assess their new cohort of Year 7 students’ ability, confidence, enjoyment, and motivation effectively and musically via a practical project
3. For students in Year 7 to have the opportunity to play, perform and collaborate on instruments from the beginning of the year, starting with music they are familiar with and building on this by playing more challenging instrumental parts in a new context
4. For music, and the shared experience of learning and performing together, to become a means for students from a variety of different feeder schools to form friendship groups, learn about each other’s skills and abilities, and have a shared experience in common, thus fostering their personal and social education as well as building on prior musical learning

Linking Student Experience

The same material is used in this project to form a link between primary and secondary schools.

If a primary school doesn’t have a whole class learning programme (delivered by their local music hub or other organisation), or if there is little or no communication between secondary music teachers and their primary colleagues, then the materials can still be used to deliver quality musical outcomes and to achieve the project aims as stated above. However, the project is likely to be most successful if there is a continuation of musical activity between schools, and communication that shares how this project has been approached, what has worked well (and not so well), and most importantly to convey information about students’ prior learning and experiences from this project. Students need to experience this project twice, once in Year 6, and again in Year 7, for it to achieve the desired outcomes.

Further collaboration between schools could be enhanced by secondary school heads of music (and/or students) supporting the planning and delivery of practical sessions with Year 6 classes, and by exploring joint performance opportunities.  If secondary music teachers are also able to give subject specialist support for non-specialist primary teachers in the initial planning stages, this could also be extremely advantageous.

Contact between primary/secondary schools to allow for cross-phase support and consistency, will help to ensure that the materials are used to promote the most effective musical learning for all students.

Using The Online Resources

All resources for this project can be found HERE

The Wellerman Collection of resources has been carefully created to ensure that it can be led by teachers – regardless of their prior musical experience:

• Generalist teachers who want to make music with their classes but who don’t consider themselves to be music specialists
• Primary music specialists
• Secondary music teachers who would like to consolidate student instrumental skills before moving on to more complex instrumental performances

The resources comprise of:

• Body Percussion
• Untuned Percussion
• Chair Drumming
• Tuned Percussion
• Ukulele
• Guitar
• Keyboard
• Whole Class Band (JustPlay)
• Music Technology (InTheStyleOf)

The above materials meet many common curriculum requirements, particularly around performing and listening. Instructions for using each of the resources is contained within each resource guide with easy-to-follow guidance for both teachers and students.

We highly recommend that this resource is used in a flexible way – adapting to the pace set by the class and applying the usual planning, diagnosing, challenge, support and expectations for any lesson based on the needs and abilities of the students taking part in your context.

Timing

In primary schools, ideally this project should be scheduled sometime during the last half term of Year 6, as near to the end of term as possible. This could form part of an arts week, an activity day, or an ongoing series of lessons or practical sessions.

The project can then be developed during the first few weeks (or longer) of Year 7 curriculum music lessons so that the first experience in Year 7 builds on the skills, enthusiasm and knowledge students will undoubtedly have gained from participating in this project during Year 6.

LearnToPlay is an approach to teaching and learning music. It meets many common curriculum requirements, particularly around performing and listening.

Although the resource contains a step-by-step approach to instrumental learning for ukulele, guitar, keyboard and tuned percussion, we have deliberately not suggested a set scheme of work to allow teachers to adapt the resource activities.

We highly recommend that this resource is used in a flexible way – adapting to the pace set by the class and applying the usual planning, diagnosing, challenge, support and expectations for any lesson based on the needs and abilities of the students taking part in your context.

Assessment

The following statements are taken from the ‘Progression and Assessment in Music’ documents for Primary and Key Stage 3 Music.  Each statement is relevant to the project and should aid teachers in their judgements of pupil progress overall.

Year 6

• I can demonstrate control of vocal techniques
• When singing, I can maintain my own part with accurate pitch whilst hearing other parts
• I can use the inter-related dimensions to improve the quality of my performances when singing or playing
• I can play in an ensemble, taking an individual part and showing an awareness of balance
• I can recover from mistakes in a performance
• I can listen to longer extracts and describe using knowledge of inter-related dimensions of music
• I can create and perform more complicated rhythms, aurally and from notations
• I can select appropriate sounds to achieve an effect for a purpose
• I can recognise and use simple staff notation

Year 7

• I can sing, showing control of musical elements.
• I can play, showing control of musical elements.
• I can maintain an instrumental part in a group piece.
• Working with others, I can devise and undertake simple development of musical ideas to produce compositions, demonstrating understanding and appropriate use of musical elements.
• I can make distinctions within musical elements in describing, comparing and making judgements about different kinds of music.
• I can suggest improvements to my music.
• I can control, use and show understanding of solo melody with rhythmic and chordal accompaniments.
• I can control, use and show understanding of pulse and metre.
• I can use and show understanding of staff notation and also more complex graphic scores.
• I can control, use and show understanding of melodic shape, together with chords and harmony.
• I can control, use and show understanding of basic musical forms, including repetition.