Sound of Intent in the Early Years - A project is born

The Sounds of Intent in the Early Years framework of musical development, which was designed particularly for young children, is now available to Children’s Centres in England for free, thanks to the National Foundation for Youth Music and Garfield Weston Foundation.

What does Sounds of Intent in the Early Years do? 

The Sounds of Intent in the Early Years (SoI-EY) framework sets out the four main developmental stages that mark young children’s musical journeys. The first is ‘sounds interesting’, which is about an early awareness of sound and music; the second is ‘copy me, copy you’, when simple imitation comes to the fore; the third is ‘bits of pieces’, when children start to use musical motifs from the music to which they are exposed to create new songs; and the fourth is ‘whole songs, in time and in tune’. These four levels are mapped across the three ways in which children engage with music: ‘reactively’, ‘proactively’ and ‘interactively’. Hence there are 4 x 3 = 12 elements (A, B, C and D) of musical engagement that can be identified. You can discern the baseline level of musical development of young children and then use that to assess their musical learning and development over time.  

What does Sounds of Intent in the Early Years look like?  

The pack includes anA0-sized poster which sets these elements out, with examples, and describes a range of activities: “what to do now and what to do next” for young children at each of the music-developmental levels. There is also a SoI-EY booklet explaining how to use the resource and finally, ‘recording progress’ template sheets.