Creative Music-Making for EYFS - moving online
Following lockdown in March 2020, the Leaps and Bounds team had to think creatively about how we could continue our EYFS provision remotely. After discussions with teachers, we knew that not all children were familiar with nursery rhymes or traditional tales and so this became a key part of our intent. We wanted to produce short 15-minute online content and interactive videos that could be accessed at home and in school for keyworker children. We also wanted the sessions to compliment the other themed weekly activities going out from Edsential; #EdsentialAtHome, www.edsential.com/edsential-at-home/ As a starting point, we devised a framework to help us to really finetune our work and the learning objective and outcomes for each session. We had an Introduction and Welcome (Hello Song), an Action Video demonstrating a musical skill/understanding (dynamics loud and quiet, tempo fast and slow), a Stimulus (accompanied with a narrative), a Tidy Up/Goodbye Song, following by some Inspirational Listening (a recorded performance by our music tutors or a link to a relevant song/piece of music).
We used the app Acapella to record much of our content as we were able to collaborate easily from our homes. This also allowed children to see our familiar faces and join in with the activities. Once each element had been recorded, we then used iMovie to collate all the videos ready to be uploaded onto the YouTube channel. After completing our first few sessions, we reflected on our planning and structure and whether we needed to change anything. We found that planning, creating and uploading a session each week was proving too complex and to be honest, stressful. Our short Acapella videos lasting no more than a few minutes were taking hours to complete: it was very easy to watch your video and then rerecord it. I became quite self-critical and would spend time editing and rerecording because I wasn’t happy with my performance. I think that’s one of the key differences with online and live teaching, because an online video is there to stay. When teaching live, you are responding organically to children’s reactions and interests and a mistake in a performance is forgotten. As musicians, we can be perfectionists and I had to make peace with that and tried to imagine that I was with a group of children rather than looking at my phone camera! We all supported each other and we created some fantastic videos. I particularly enjoyed putting together our rendition of 'Dance of the Clowns' by Mendelssohn where we had five instrumental parts and a sixth video square for actions. We also took to face painting and costumes and we became more creative and spontaneous as the weeks went on.
As a result, we planned sessions over two weeks which gave us much more time to record new content, check permissions and to put the videos together in iMovie. To maintain continuity and familiarity to the sessions, we used the same Hello and Tidy Up/Goodbye videos each time, and we alternated the Action videos to compliment the Stimulus videos. For example, in our ‘Night Time’ session, I chose a lullaby to use in the Stimulus video and we tried singing it using different dynamics (loud and quiet). To support this, the Action Video explored loud and quiet with body percussion and kitchen utensils.
By the Summer, we had produced seven online sessions with each tutor taking it in turns to lead the main stimulus. We are very proud of our sessions and we learnt so much along the way. You can see examples of our work here: www.edsential.com/leaps-bounds/
L Bracegirdle, Edsential CIC Music Tutor