Online Teaching Materials
Downloadable resources for music teachers
Teaching materials are an integral part of a music teacher's practice. Every month Music Teacher publishes downloadable materials for KS3, 4 and 5, offering complete units of work, GCSE and A Level set-work guidance, and practical ideas across all levels for both classroom and peripatetic teachers. All materials are written by experienced teachers and examiners and provide indispensable content for your teaching.
If you would like to see an example of a Teaching Material, please click here.
SubscribeWJEC AoS4: Manic Street Preachers ‘Everything Must Go’
KS 4
In this resource, I don’t intend to replicate the content of any of the excellent resources available on the WJEC website. Instead, the resource will suggest ways into tackling the song through...
Lo-fi hip-hop
KS 3
This resource attempts to describe a favourite unit of mine: lo-fi hip-hop. We’ll look at the essentials of the subgenre, the potential for musical learning, and a suggested approach to delivering a...
Edexcel AoS1: wider listening, part 2
KS 4
In the first part of this two-part resource (Music Teacher, August 2023) we began to look at the first two of the four pieces of music suggested by Edexcel for wider listening as part of its GCSE Area...
WJEC AoS E: Brahms Symphony No. 1, fourth movement
KS 5
The final movement of Brahms’s First Symphony is a 16-minute epic, befitting of a Symphony that took more than 20 years to write. It is chock-full of the kind of structural detail that shows Brahms’s...
Classroom and youth band improvisation
KS 3
I love to improvise. It’s the most inventive, liberating and empowering form of musical self-expression I’ve ever experienced.
OCR AoS1 Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4: wider listening
KS 5
The first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 is the prescribed work in OCR’s Area of Study 1 (Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven) for 2024 (and covered in its own Music...
Composing activities at KS3
KS 3
It’s crucial for any non-experienced composer to understand specific steps to navigate their way to a finished composition.
Sound recording: pre-production
KS 3 KS 4 KS 5
In the first of this three-part resource on recording music in schools, we looked at options for setting up a studio (Music Teacher, April 2023). In this second resource, we’ll move on to the...
AQA AoS4: orchestral music of Bartók and Kodály
KS 4
Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály met as young men in 1905 in Budapest, and formed a lifelong friendship. They shared a passionate interest in the folk music of Hungary and wanted to incorporate it into...
Developing wider listening: blues
KS 4 KS 5
It’s no overstatement to say that the biggest influence on 20th-century popular music is probably the blues.