Let’s learn how to use Classroom 200

Being faced with a never-ending scrolling page of 200 pieces of music can be a little daunting to start with, but never fear! The left-hand menu is your friend.

The lesson plans are designed for children aged 5-14, use the scale to demonstrate how the music on the right changes when you use the scale for ages.

Our choices of lesson plans to suit ages stems from which year group the repertoire is set for in England’s Model Music Curriculum, but it’s worth knowing that it’s not set in stone. For those of you who teach more than one age group, you may look to music set for those above and below your children. For example children ages 0-4 and 15+ can also use this resource for motivation for a new project, or just as a playlist.

Room Layout – during the pandemic, we all learnt how to be more flexible with the environments we had to teach our lessons in. Singing was problematic of course, and many of us ended up teaching in unusual spaces. Lessons in the science block, in the dining hall, on the field, and of course online became quite normal for many of us. By choosing ‘Flexible’ you’ll be presented with lesson plans that can be completed outside of your music classroom. If you don’t want to see those, click ‘Classroom.’

In England and in other countries, our National Curriculum mentions the ‘inter-related dimensions of music’ to categorise the music we teach. If this terminology is used in your school, you may find ‘Elements’ dropdown a helpful way to distinguish the choices of music you make for learning in your school. If this isn’t something you use in your school, the options of ‘Pitch, Structure, Tempo, Texture, Timbre, Duration and Dynamics’ is still helpful in quickly finding lesson plans with these elements as a focus. We’ll be discussing these terms a little later in the course and you’ll find a glossary of musical terms at the very end of the course.

Another way to categorise music is by the ensemble or group it is written for. You may use the word ‘forces’ for this too. Group Type gives you options to limit the lesson plans available to just music from certain group types, like Orchestral Music, Stage and Screen and Choir or Vocal Music.

At the top of the left-hand menu, you’ll see a search box. This can be used to quickly find lessons that include a certain topic or musical term, for example Ostinato or harmony. It also includes genres, composers, artists, as well as non-musical terminology to make this resource as helpful as possible.