Early Years to Key Stage 1: Singing, parental involvement and transition
The Voices Foundation and Metoomusic are working in a nursery and neighbouring primary school with the aim of supporting personal, social and academic outcomes for children and families in challenging circumstances. The programme is delivered as part of the Northamptonshire Music Education Hub’s Musical Inclusion commissioning programme and is funded by Youth Music.
This is an early intervention programme focussing on the early years and key stage 1 working with Victoria Primary School and Highfield Nursery which are on the same site in Wellingborough. One key aim is to support improved transition from the early years setting to primary school, and we are investing our efforts and energy in encouraging parental engagement within the nursery sessions. By doing this, parents will have the chance to be involved in their child’s development at an early stage and see the benefits of music and education in general. There is a lot of evidence to show that parental involvement is critical to a child’s progression, and is especially effective when developed as part of an early intervention project.
The Voices Foundation model focuses on up-skilling teachers and practitioners in order to build legacy and sustainability. All staff are trained in dedicated after-school sessions, and coaching takes place in the classroom on a one-to-one basis with each teacher. Our skilled practitioners work side-by-side with each teacher or practitioner to support their development and the progression of the children. The Voices Foundation’s learning resources, Inside Music are crucial in this process as they provide each teacher with a unit-by-unit incremental curriculum and the materials to deliver that. We use simple song material so that teachers who are time-pressured or lacking in confidence can learn them quickly and easily, and then focus on how these songs can be used to enable musical learning and progression to take place. The model also draws on the Kodaly method, internalising musical concepts and learning through singing.
The approach demands a lot from the teachers and practitioners as most of them do not have a musical background themselves, but are expected to teach music or sing with their children. Not only do they end up leading singing sessions, but enabling learning and progression to take place so that children develop new musical skills. It’s amazing and inspiring to see the staff’s willingness and courage to take on board challenging new approaches – many of them are facing their fears by singing in front of their colleagues and pupils.
At Victoria Primary School every staff member is getting stuck in and leading their class music lessons using the Voices Foundation learning resources and under the guidance of Teri Deal. As well as this, all staff have signed up to being a ‘singing school’ by committing to daily singing for every class. A teacher who described herself as having ‘no confidence at all’ in teaching or participating in music is now leading her class in daily musical learning. The whole concept behind the Voices Foundation approach is that music can be taught in small bite-sized chunks – little and often.
In the nursery setting, the nursery practitioners are taking part in sessions with the children alongside Sarah Wise. On more than one occasion they have reported EAL children who are normally quiet using more language following a session e.g. a practitioner reported an EAL child (who previously had not spoken) banging something and saying “drum”.
The impacts that we are seeing after such a short time are impressive, and we look forward to sharing the project outcomes in due course. If you want to find out more about The Voices Foundation, please contact us here or visit our website here. Our Inside Music resources are available to buy here and will soon be available as a digital resource. We would like to thank Northamptonshire Music Education Hub for their support for this programme.