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Latest News |
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Welcome to Musical Contexts! |
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How do I create a Username and Password? |
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Musical Contexts is a website providing teachers with quality, “ready to use”, tried and tested and professionally presented resources for use in the Music classroom. The aim of Musical Contexts is to produce an easy-to-navigate and comprehensive bank of Music Resources, relieving teachers from the lengthy process of resource collection and preparation. Resources are all available for immediate download and are grouped in “Topics” or “Units” within each Year Group. Musical Contexts can provide new material to your existing schemes of work or entire schemes can be used direct from the site - all the resources are there ready to download and use. I hope that Musical Contexts can help you and that you enjoy the site. For an overview of Musical Contexts download the following presentation with lots of sample resources: |
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What kind of resources are on Musical Contexts? |
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Each of the KS2 and KS3 units in Musical Contexts covers a number of the six Elements of Music - Rhythm, Pitch, Texture, Timbre & Dynamics, Melody and Harmony and Structure and Form. An overview is provided on the unit pages showing which elements are covered by which unit as well as on the Schemes of Work. |
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Please email root@musicalcontexts.co.uk for full details on how to set up your own username and password for full access to all of the resources.
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How has Musical Contexts helped people? |
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I’ve had great success with many
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Just to say THANK YOU for the amazing units you provide us on Musical Contexts. They are so well put together, easy to follow, the children love them and there's always something different for them to do and see and react to! So, thanks for the masterful job. The units are priceless. Kate Casper Head of Music St. Catherine's School Twickenham |
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MUSICAL CONTEXTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS - Resources written and compiled and website designed and maintained by Rob Blythe with invaluable assistance with imaging and layout advice from Angela Blythe. Supported Self Study Audio narrations by Lesley Blythe. Huge thanks to Kevin Griffin for invaluable patience and suggestions and to Seamus and Felix for unending support. |
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I have been teaching for over ten years and as a director of music in a large school, this resource is refreshing and inspiring - thank you for allowing musicians to utilise such fantastic materials.
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Home |
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Sample Materials |
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Year 7 Resources |
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Year 8 Resources |
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Year 9 Resources |
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GCSE
Music |
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Music Documents |
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Musical
Contexts |
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Key Stage 2 Music Resources |
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Frequently Asked Questions |
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Feedback |
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A Venn diagram simplifies this listening activity making it easier for pupils to identify different musical features |
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A Keyboard Assessment is a great way of tracking pupil’s progress! |
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Here, St. John’s have simplified the parts and added a note guide to help pupils. |
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Musical Contexts contains a wide variety of different music teaching resources uniquely coded and grouped by unit. Within each unit are: · Teacher Schemes of Work (SOW) & Lesson Plans (LP) · Learning, Listening, Composing & Evaluating Worksheets (W) · Performing Activities - Songs (SS) & Scores (S) · Starter and Plenary Activities (SP) · Supporting Activities - Cover & Homework Worksheets (CH) · Audio Files (A) in .mp3 format · MIDI Files (MIDI) in .MID format Some units also feature Video Files in .mpg format (and most available via You Tube®) and actual classroom recordings of pupils’ work as part of the Musical Contexts “IN ACTION” area (PA). |
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Lights, Camera, Action! - Film Music coming to OCR and AQA GCSE areas The first of a series of new GCSE Music study sessions is now online, covering both the OCR and AQA areas on “Film Music”. Starting with the question - “What is film music for?” - pupils explore how different film soundtracks create different effects before learning how early films used pre-existed compositions as a soundtrack which, in themselves, contained a wealth of musical elements, devices and clichés that later film music composers continued to use. Pupils are introduced to the Leitmotif and the effects of chromaticism, pitch, dynamics and sequencing in creating a dramatic effect - all of which will be revised and developed further in later study sessions. There’s plenty of opportunities for both watching and listening to film music examples, especially in the Plenary What’s the Film? quiz. Lesson plan format now online. SSS to follow. |
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Musical Contexts - An Overview Presentation (.ppt format) (206 MB) |
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Musical Contexts - An Overview Presentation (.zip format with .ppt file zipped) (137 MB) |
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I used some of the GCSE material yesterday with a low ability student who has had difficulty accessing the curriculum. The lesson proved very successful with the student who enjoyed the wide selection of musical excerpts. |
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I think that the Self-Supported Study option in the GCSE Music area is a fantastic idea. It would be great to have some of these for the different musical eras (this way it could be used for any exam board). Also a similar addition for compositional techniques would be a great thing. Thanks. |
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Your site - is bloody brilliant. I am the director of music at a private preparatory school and am currently in the summer holiday's after my first year there. The music department (one teacher) had been following 'Music Express' - not my favourite scheme of work, it dumbs down rather a lot so I reinvented the wheel and replanned the lot. How I WISH I had discovered your site earlier! I am going to implement about half of your units of work, and can't wait!! Granted your units are for secondary age, and we go from years 2 - 8, but with a little tweaking they are PERFECT units of work. Great to see some proper notation in there too. Chris Andrews |
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We have been trialling various units of work from the site and are very pleased with the way they are running. These are going well and the students are gaining a lot from the resources. To make life easier we have downloaded the worksheets and formed a booklet from them so that all students have access to the worksheets immediately and this seems to be working very well. The lesson plans are very helpful also and are a good starting point for the staff. We have amended some worksheets slightly to suit our needs and we have added some other sheets into our booklets to make it slightly more flexible. We think that the site is very good particularly for KS3 and the team here felt we should let you know how much we have enjoyed using the resources this year.
Jonathan Haslett, Head of Music, St John’s Catholic School and Sixth Form Centre, Bishop Auckland |
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Rob replies : “One of the main aims of the site, was to allow teachers the flexibility to adapt and refine, supplement and support existing resources and schemes of work and it seems that St. John’s RC School & SFC has done just this! There is the opportunity to teach the lesson plans exactly as written for those who wish, but it’s great to see schools such as this using the resources in a more flexible way.” Jonathan very kindly allowed me to use his quote on the site and also to share some of his adapted resources so users can see how Musical Contexts can be adapted to suit individual school’s requirements and needs. |