Our whole-school homework this week is:
Living and Learning: spend a week giving compliments to each other at home each day. Try to make sure the compliments are about what we’ve done and not just how we look – we’ve got more power to change what we do than how we look so these compliments can be much more effective. Some children find it hard to receive compliments, so this week of giving compliments might help, too.
Reading: please make sure your child is reading on a daily basis.
Number Fact Fluency: use Numbots or Times Table Rock Stars in regular short bursts.
Talk Time
This week’s homework has cultural theme.
I can talk about different music.
In music lessons this year, pupils have listened to different pieces of music. We’d like you to listen to two contrasting pieces of music and discuss them.
Here are some questions that could help to structure your discussions:
- How does the piece of music make them feel?
- Do you like the music? Why? Why not?
- What instruments can you hear?
- How does the music change during the piece?
- What is different and what is the same between the two pieces of music?
There is some vocabulary below (we call them musical dimensions) which we introduce to pupils in music lessons across key stage 1 and key stage 2. It would be great if you and your child could try to use some of this vocabulary when discussing the pieces.
| dimension | definition |
| pulse | a steady beat like a ticking clock or your heartbeat; it can be measured in time by counting the number of beats per minute (BPM) |
| pitch | how high or low a note is |
| dynamics | how loud or soft (quiet) a part is played |
| tempo | the speed of the music |
| rhythm | the pattern of long and short sounds in a piece of music |
| timbre | the type of sound that an instrument makes (eg voice: whisper, hum, sing; eg instrument: tinkly, hard, soft, buzzy) |
| structure | the order of the different parts of the piece of music or song (eg traditional pop music usually follows a verse, chorus, verse structure) |
| duration | the length of time each note is played for |
| texture | how different sounds are layered |
Finally, here are some links to pieces of music which you may want to listen to:
| Mars from The Planets
Holst 20th Century |
Hard Day’s Night The Beatles
Pop |
Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire
A R Rahman 21st Century |
Space Oddity
David Bowie Pop: glam rock |
Gamelan percussion (Indonesia) |