Free Resources Round Up
We teachers love free stuff. Pick and mixing to build our own lesson plans and Schemes of Work is what we do best, and there are so many organisations offering subscriptions and resource packages that sometimes it’s hard to know where to direct that precious budget to get the most flexible resources that can be used with as many students as possible. A good place to start is to try some of the free resources on offer. The list below is by no means comprehensive, just a few that have been recommended in the online teacher groups and which can be accessed free of charge and used right away. We look forward to offering some more in depth reviews of some of these in forthcoming articles.
EFDSS (English Folk Song and Dance Society) Explore a multitude of articles and ideas from Folk Dance in the National Curriculum to Tunes and Grooves in Folk and Bhangra in their Free Resources Bank.
ABRSM Classical 100 is a free online resource for music teachers working with learners up to the age of 14. It iss all about bringing music to life in the classroom
ABRSM Classroom 200 is a free online resource for music teachers working with learners up to the age of 14. It features music in a wide range of styles, plus accompanying lesson plans. These resources require a login to an ABRSM account so watch this space for a full review coming soon.
The Jam Zone - Music Will Formerly known as Little Kids Rock, this website is a goldmine of free resources for exploring Rock and Pop in the classroom. From online instrument tutorials for students to access at home, to downloadable lead sheets for a huge number of songs, this has been my go-to for rock and pop resources for many years and has pride of place on my bookmarks bar
LSO These are great resources for exploring the instruments of the orchestra with videos, stories and ideas for listening. My Primary children have enjoyed watching the ‘Where’s Simon’ videos to introduce the instrument families and they also offer seminars and support for A Level Music.
Incredibox is a music app (can also be used in a browser) that lets you mix sounds to create your own music. You can choose from 9 musical styles at the start to lay down, record and share your mix. You drag and drop symbols to the characters to hear them sing and beatbox - this is great fun; I got very distracted by playing with this and my primary children are going to love it!
Create and Sing from The Royal Opera House provides flexible teaching ideas, lesson plans, resources, songs, warm ups and CPD opportunities for teachers of all age groups. This is a rich source of ideas to help children engage with Opera and introduce them to some well known works. This also requires a log in so I am looking forward to exploring it in more depth in a longer review in due course.
Musical Futures International are offering some free resources including teacher guides for songwriting and minimalism, free online resources and a free whole class Ukulele resource. There is no free trial or subscription necessary to access these, just click and explore!
I Can Compose have some free posters available to download from their website. As well as decorating the classroom, they offer some great suggestions for music to listen to linked to Women’s History Month and Black History Month.
Beginner Orchestra offers flexible arrangements for ensembles which comes with downloadable notation, audio tracks of each part to help students to hear what they should be playing and backing tracks. They also offer some free downloadable resources to support ensemble and instrumental work in schools.
Beat Goes On offer STOMP-style body percussion and samba drumming workshopsand have some free resources to download alongside their You Tube channel with lots of ideas for Body Percussion activities to try in class. We love ‘Stomp and clap the rhythm like that’ from the Body Beats playlist in our primary school to get the children up and moving!
Finally You Tube is FULL of great channels packed with video resources. There are far too many to list, but currently popular in the online teacher communities are:
Music with Mr Gray
Mr Henry’s Music World
Ukulaliens
Spen Valley Ukuleles and Guitars
Mr. Noé