Primary schools throughout the United Kingdom use Trinity’s range of qualifications and resources to support their music curriculum.
Arts Award Discover and Explore are particular favourites and can be used to enhance whole class instrumental teaching (WCIT) programmes, as exampled in our blog Capturing the joy of Whole Class Instrumental Teaching through Arts Award. By supporting WCIT lessons with learning about other musicians, composers and arts organisations, getting them to engage with performances as an audience member, and asking them to reflect on their experiences and what they have learnt, you are fostering a life-long love of music; by evidencing this in a portfolio and achieving Arts Award certification, students are recognised for the progression they have made.
Arts Award is incredibly versatile too. It can be integrated into any aspect of your music lessons, whether you are focusing on playing, singing, composing, music technology or a combination of them all. It can also be used to support cross-cultural or cross-art form learning. For example, a cross-curricular project focusing on a particular country might also include arts activities that are traditional or popular in that part of the world, which is then evidenced and contributes towards their Arts Award.
Arts Award is partnered with some fantastic music organisations and projects to support you with your delivery. You could use BBC 10 Pieces to run a programme focused on Classical Music, Out of the Ark to encourage singing, or utilise the range of resources on . If you’re already subscribing to Charanga or Out of the Ark, they also offer discounts when you enter young people for the awards through their organisations.
For students who are progressing with their vocal or instrumental learning, perhaps in individual or small group lessons, introducing them to our graded music exams is a great way to reward their hard work and progress. Performers benefit from a wide and varied range of repertoire from the earliest of grades, in both Classical & Jazz and Rock & Pop styles, as well as and options that enable them to play to their strengths, such as the choice of either a face-to-face or digital exam, or to perform their own composition. Music Certificates and Group certificates offer an alternative examination for pupils wishing to perform a mini-recital as a soloist or as a member of a group.
You could also explore ways our syllabuses can be adapted for classroom music lessons too. Our blog Rock & Pop in a Primary setting provides ideas that can be utilised using either the Rock & Pop or Classical & Jazz syllabuses. Or you might want to consider embedding music theory into your lessons, as illustrated in our blog Developing early music theory and knowledge in a primary setting.
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