Encouraging pupils to use their voices can be a great challenge in some settings.
Since the Covid pandemic, we at Kent Music have noticed more conversations with schools about the challenges in getting children and young people singing again. We have brought together some information on the role of singing in the school, how to improve singing in your school and guidance on creating a singing strategy.
The benefits of singing
Singing is an accessible way of not only delivering parts of the music curriculum but supporting pupil development and their transferable skills. With regular singing comes a number of physical, psychological and social benefits including improving the efficiency of the cardiovascular system, development of fine and gross motor control in the vocal system, enhanced social inclusion and interpersonal communication skills and more.
It has been proven that children who participate in musical activities and singing regularly perform better in subjects such as English, Maths and Science and studies have also shown that pupils who engage in musical activities have improved self-confidence and are able to express themselves
How to improve singing in schools
Our top tips to improve singing in schools are:
- Develop a whole school approach to singing where all staff are on board and aware of the importance of singing
- Create a singing strategy (more on this below!)
- Ensure there are regular opportunities for singing, little and often is the best approach!
- Get help! There are many organisations out there to help schools, get in touch and get going!
How to create a singing strategy
No matter where you are with your singing journey in school you can create a singing strategy to aid you.
A singing strategy is a plan that you create to support the development of singing and embed singing into the everyday life of your school. Singing strategies can be created for any school type, our template and the guidance below to get yours started.
Aims of your strategy
When deciding on your aims for singing in the school think about the role you would like singing to play within school life and set yourself short-, medium- and long-term targets to achieve your aims.
A good starting point is to think about your long-term vision for singing in school and make these your aims. Below are some examples:
- We run regular singing assemblies allowing students to sing as a whole school/in key stages/ within a community setting
- All staff are confident using their voices in lessons and in singing assemblies
- Singing will be used regularly in curriculum lessons to support the delivery of the music curriculum
- We will have a choir/s open to all pupils run by a skilled musician providing the children with the opportunity to engage with high quality singing
- More boys will be singing as part of the whole school choir
- Pupils will be provided the opportunity to sing in a range of styles and genres throughout the academic year
- The school will provide opportunities for students to showcase their singing as an ensemble and soloist throughout the year
- The singing strategy will be communicated with all staff and will be monitored at regular intervals throughout the year
Once you have decided your aims set yourself a timeline to achieve them and off you go!
You can use our ready-made Singing Strategy pro-forma documents as a great starting point to help structure your singing strategy:
Who can help?
If you’d like support to create your singing strategy or to meet your aims, you can get in touch with the Schools Team. Email us at schools@kent-music.com
Alternatively, you could get in touch with Sing Up! Or Voices who support schools with singing!
