Standard 5 asks teachers to demonstrate an awareness of pupils’ development and adapt teaching accordingly. Over the past three years, I have learned a lot about children’s musical, social, and intellectual development. As I have become more comfortable with teaching the children at Starks Field, I have adapted my teaching to provide the best opportunities for musical progress. In many cases, I also attempt to use music as a means of assisting development in other areas, such as motor coordination, breath control, communication, and socialization. Listed below are some of the ways in which I use music as a method of assisting the process of child development.

Language Development

In Nursery and Reception, music is an excellent tool for encouraging vocal production, social development, and for assimilating children to the classroom environment (following instructions, playing and sharing). I always begin my Early Years lessons by singing hello to each child, and allowing them to sing hello back to me. I also integrate a lot of chants and rhymes into my lessons, so that children can develop simple language. Sometimes chants are focussed on nouns (Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, touch your nose). Other times chants are focussed on non-verbal imitation (Everybody do this just like me). Chants can also focus on verbs or preposition (Hands up, shake shake). By introducing these chants and songs to children in the Early Years, they develop their sense of pitch and rhythm, while simultaneously developing vocabulary.

Motor Coordination

Playing instruments provides opportunities to develop gross and fine motor coordination. For example, the use of maracas exercises the elbow, forearm, and wrist. While shaking the maracas, I always encourage children to listen to music and shake in time with the pulse. This makes shaking a purposeful activity, rather than a random exercise. This is most beneficial in Nursery and Reception, but is also applicable in early Key Stage 1.

Playing xylophones is a good example of developing hand-eye coordination. I often start xylophone performance on the iPads, which means that children have to use one finger to touch a particular bar on the screen. This also allows us to practice using adjectives (Touch the biggest bar; Touch the blue bar).

Breath Control

Singing and playing wind instruments is a great way of exercising breath control. Breath control is an important skill in speech and language development. In the Early Years, singing and chanting at different volumes helps to develop breath control, which can be transferred to conversational speaking.

Playing the recorder is especially effective in establishing breath control. In order to play the recorder properly, children need to blow air at just the right speed. This is often challenging at first, and many children play far too loudly. However, children receive instant feedback on their breath control, based upon the sounds that come out of their instrument. They are able to adjust the amount of air they are blowing, and therefore establish the correct volume. My goal is to teach Year 1 children to play the Sopranino recorder (a very small recorder), as that would be an excellent way of helping the many children who struggle with speech and language production.