Music will continue to flow through our school, regardless of Covid.  This is my objective. As a teacher you learn to adapt and change, but this year has been a much bigger change. As musicians it is so important we are given the chance to perform together in whatever way we can. How do we do this in a safe environment?

I spent my Summer recreating all of my KS3 schemes of work to make them Covid friendly and adapting my GCSE and A-Level lessons. This has meant recently relocating to the Barn for most of my lessons, to give a much bigger space and the opportunity for practicals to continue. This has meant a lot of body percussion workshops happen across the lower years of the school for the practical side of things, plus developing pupils’ musical theory knowledge to help those who may continue with Music in year 10. Rather than students coming to the music room, music has come to the students.

Over the last few weeks Year 7s are learning Dance Monkey and Blinded by the Lights as a body percussion performance. Year 8s are exploring the musical genre Minimalism and using percussion to create a minimalist piece, whilst Year 9s have been learning about Samba music and are currently performing their own version of Samba De Janiero. As we move to the Senior School there has been a heavy focus on Music theory, important coursework and building up a brilliant repertoire of songs that we can hopefully perform to an audience in the Spring term.

I must say I have been impressed with the resilience of the pupils and their ability to adapt to all the changes that have been made. Admittedly, the last few weeks have been very strange in Music and it has been a while to get back into the swing of things.  Even choir and orchestra club are not allowed, but as long as I am able to do so safely, practical music will continue to flow through our school.

Miss Helena Johnson, Head of Music