Resource Review - The Royal Opera House Create and Sing

The Royal Opera House Create and Sing resource describes itself as: "a creative learning resource, created with teachers, providing songs for pupils in primary schools across England".

You can download it here.

The resource includes:

• Classroom-based and digital activities, with strong curriculum links, to give better understanding of singing and opera for pupils, unlocking their imagination and creativity
• Teacher training, classroom films, lesson plans and resources to use in ways that suit the needs of the teachers and their students. Teachers do not need any previous knowledge of opera in order to take part.

I started by downloading the curriculum map which links the resources to the England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland curriculum requirements, and which has plenty of information that can be used in planning documents.

There are resources for Primary Schools built around Carmen, Hansel and Gretel and The Magic Flute. There are also additional resources for The Marriage of Figaro for KS5 and The Flying Dutchman for secondary-aged students.

In the Primary resources there are 5 lessons in each scheme and there is one for each of KS1, Lower KS2 and Upper KS2, the main difference being the complexity of the language in the script provided. The objective is to perform a song from the opera with scripts provided to place it in context. There are slides that can be downloaded and the main teaching resources are via videos and comprehensive instructions to teachers.

I think my KS1 and lower KS2 children might find learning the aria quite challenging, but as a way to introduce opera, the video and ideas is definitely something I will be looking at using over the course of this year.