Years 3 and 4 Music

In Year 3 and 4, we develop our skills at playing the recorder and compose our own melodies with a range of 3 notes.

We begin in Year 3 by learning about the correct way to hold the recorder and how to blow gently to create a nice sound! We also learn more about basic notation and rhythm, creating and recording our own short rhythmic phrases. In Year 4 we extend this by creating our own recorder melodies and performing these to a backing track of our choice.

In our composition unit, we create soundscapes based on our topic work, such as the arrival of the ‘Iron Man’. We learn about the use of timbre, dynamics and tempo in music and develop our own symbols to give instructions to our groups when we are performing our soundscapes.

In our singing unit in Year 3 and 4, we develop more confidence and accuracy, focusing on more accurate pitch and timing, and taking on some simple ‘parts’ in the song. We use the Kodaly method to ‘read’ rhythm patterns and work in small groups to explore and layer different rhythms to create interesting textures!