Our whole-school homework this week is:
Living and Learning:
Even young children can begin to develop an understanding of drugs. Talk to your child about medicines – they’re helpful drugs, but only when used by the right people in the right way. Older children can develop this understanding in terms of other drugs like alcohol – talk about age restrictions and drinking in moderation.
The BBC Bitesize page ‘What are medicines and drugs?’ is worth checking out with children in Key Stage 2.
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 is another opportunity to listen to and talk about music.
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:
| Mas Que Nada Sergio Mendes Samba (Brazil) | Four Seasons
Vivaldi Baroque |
Night on a Bare Mountain Mussorgsky Romantic | Running Up That Hill
Kate Bush Pop: art pop |
Ebony Steel Band
Calypso (Trinidad) |