While I was in Malaysia, I had the pleasure of discovering an instrument I was as yet unfamiliar with - the Sape! The Sape is a string instrument (much like a lute) native to the Orung Ulu communities of Borneo. It is still being handcrafted by instrument makers such as those working at the Sarawak Cultural Village, crafting Sape like the one pictured below: The music I most frequently heard it playing featured improvisatory melodies over a basic chord structure (mostly playi

Over the past year I have had the opportunity (thanks to a spare period in the timetable!) to run a number of music enrichment/extension classes. One such unit I ran was a Year 4 mallet percussion group (who later dubbed themselves the "marim-bros"...bless them). The class consisted of around 15 Year 4 students, most of whom were learning piano at or outside of school and were looking for opportunities to extend themselves in music. The school was lucky enough to have two mar

One aspect of a music program that I have always felt distinguishes a good program from a truly great one is the number of extra-curricular opportunities that it offers. While the mainstream classroom curriculum is deserving of much of our attention and is the best way to offer music to the widest range of students, you still need to consider what breadth of opportunities your school's music program offers. Do you offer instrumental music tuition? Ensembles? Elective classes?

An important part of any music education should be discovering the wide variety of instruments available to us. These instrumental units are always some of my favourites and the kids always engage with them really well. However, teaching students about these instruments effectively can be challenging unless you are a one-man-band! (I most definitely am not, and whilst I can confidently show my students around the world of brass, especially the ins and outs of a French horn, I

Hello there, fellow Kodalyphiles! Today you're in for a mega blog that has been a long time coming. I have been looking a lot recently at doing themed lessons (having a central idea that links together several different songs and activities into one cohesive lesson - great for smooth transitions!) and as I was going through my song lists looking for possible themes I realised just how many great songs there are out there about chickens! Now my chicken puppets are some of my f