SPECIAL MUSIC
There is a palpable sense of fun and excitement as children enter the music room. What music will be playing as they come in? Will it encourage movement and playfulness, disinterest, conversation or a feeling of calmness and contemplation? Each time the children come in, the room is set out in a different way, arranged perhaps to reflect a new topic. For a project on ‘India’, chairs and instruments are covered in saris, bangara music is pumping out of the speakers and there is a pungent smell of spice in the air. At other times the focus centres on a particular group of instruments, sometimes concealed under a brightly coloured parachute which can be dramatically whisked off. The children are involved in a multisensory science project on water accompanying a song or a composition about raindrops, or negotiating a storm with water sprayers, flapping blue cloth, bird callers, bubbles, origami birds flapping through the air and any thing that brings the subject to life. The aim is always to evoke interest and a sense of curiosity and excitement for what is going to happen next.
For some children this is all too exciting. A teaching assistant guides them to a safe place within the room where concentration is possible on their own terms. I have learned through experience that a child who appears not to be listening or taking part physically in a session can successfully access the content of a lesson on the periphery. This should be allowed as long as the others are not disturbed. Sometimes responses such as singing and clapping happen later, on the way out, in the classroom, or at playtime.
Music is often an integral part of life in special schools. It can herald key points in the school day and provide a skeleton of sound to hang the day’s activities from. In a confusing world where spoken language for some children may only form a small part of understanding and communication, music can be a powerful non verbal trigger to stop or start working, to tidy up, or to get ready for lunch. This adds another sensory layer to visual/pictorial timetables.
Music can add another dimension of fun and activity to literacy and numeracy for all children, particularly those with learning difficulties. There is much current research evidence to suggest that learning is enhanced if the experience involves the emotions. All children, particularly those with learning difficulties make progress if a learning hook is established between something new and exciting and something already experienced and enjoyed. For example we all know that songs with actions can make learning numbers fun, but a familiar song like 5 little ducks can be made more memorable with some imaginative props. Laminated numbers can be made for each verse, a box with water or scrunched up paper to throw plastic ducks in and out of, duck caller whistles, a duck squirter etc, anything familiar and fun to bring interest to the song and of course to make the sequence of numbers more memorable.
Books can be brought to life by adding musical sounds while acting out different characters and activities. Recordings on video or soundtrack, or performing the story to an audience, can greatly add to the pleasure and understanding of a text.
Singing is the mainstay of most music lessons in special schools, and adds punctuation throughout the day. It is challenging, however for the teacher to make this accessible to all children and particularly those with language and articulation difficulties. Supporting adults can help by singing in an uninhibited way themselves, by valuing enthusiasm and enjoyment above excellence, and encouraging students to vocalise themselves. One discovery after many years of singing with children with learning difficulties is that a microphone (even a pretend or a broken one) can significantly help reduce initial embarrassment about singing or speaking in front of others. I start with passing the microphone round the circle and make silly sounds first (teaching concepts such as loud, soft, high, and low at the same time), and the4n move on to talking and singing. Some children respond more easily if they hold a puppet and sing or talk as if making the puppet’s voice.
The microphone somehow makes it easier, perhaps by displacing responsibility for the sounds made. It is important to allow increased response time for children with language processing difficulties, and to amplify their efforts by repeating the sounds they make and weaving them into class music making.
There are various ways of encouraging independence of choice for children with word-finding difficulties who find remembering songs a challenge. In an art lesson make large cards each with a picture depicting a familiar song. These need to be very clear and simple and can be laminated to serve as permanent reminders of the class repertoire. Otherwise make a box of brightly wrapped toys, each one representing a song, (a star, a bus, a bobbin, etc) to be opened like presents.
Create a ‘lucky dip’ rucksack to be to be offered round the room by a child. In the bag toy animals prompt particular animal songs (how much is that doggy, Little Peter Rabbit, Old MacDonald had a Cow). Stick the names of songs on signs all over the music room walls as an aide memoire for teachers and other staff and any students who can read. Reminders like these help avoid those moments of lost momentum when it’s hard to think of what to sing next.
Another way of helping with word memory is to use a ‘call and response’ style of song so only small phrases have to be remembered. This is particularly effective with movement (marching or clapping) to give the song a strong rhythm and to provide another sensory channel.
Music is a universal medium for communication which provides rich opportunities for integration into the local community. Group singing, sharing themed compositions, participation in festivals, parades and concerts, with other groups and schools are good examples. Classes of children in some special schools enjoy a weekly music session with a class from a mainstream school. Parents, teachers and pupils involved in such links report the benefits of feeling increasingly involved in a community which values and supports uniqueness and difference. In my experience it is common for teachers and parents to report that mainstream children with learning difficulties, particularly those with challenging behaviour, respond empathically in these groups.
As a special school teacher I have found little difficulty in persuading local musicians from a wide range of genres to come and play to children in the school. The children provide an appreciative if sometimes noisy audience. Workshops led by musicians widen experience and appreciation particularly if they involve instruments and dancing, and give class teachers rich material to work on in the weeks that follow. A video recorder is a really useful tool to help remember how to follow up such visits, and children almost always like seeing themselves on screen.
Children with Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties (PMLD) can be easily included in music groups. They take part aurally, socially and visually with the lesson even if they cannot actively participate physically. Today’s technology ensures that sounds can be controlled by switches and other bodily operated devices. Group responses and a physical sense of inclusion can be achieved by passing a hoop or stretchy band through arms, or rhythms tapped gently on tables or backs. Verbal responses can be made from something like a large button for example a ‘Big Mac’, a simple recording machine which can be programmed and activated by tapping to produce a recorded ‘hello’ to sound along with other classmates. Planned silences should leave enough time for children’s natural vocalisations to add to the session.
Such contributions of technologically or vocally produced sounds can be used to form a repeated section perhaps as part of a musical composition. Including children with PMLD is also made possible by using large vibrating instruments for example a child sized slit drum or a resonance board. These instruments are big enough for a child to lie on whilst another plays a rhythm to form the accompaniment of a song composed as they play.
LISTENING . Some children just love to hold or fiddle with something while they listen. Sometimes, when they come in to the room a circle of chairs can be set out with an instrument on each so that children can join in with the recorded music they could hear as they enter. At other times they might listen to music holding long bendy sticks pointing into the middle of the room with lengths of colourful fluffy strips of material to beat time. As an extension to this, dancing with ribbon sticks, at first freely and then some (child led) sequencing and structure can be introduced for the more physically able. Activities involving gentle movement to music like this can be the basis of a performance to another class. In the same setting swirling colourful scarves can be a focus of interest around a child who has difficulty moving independently. Huge co-operative excitement can be experienced by the effect of a soft toy jumping on a square of lycra which is stretched and bounced in a circle of children to a strong rhythm.
It’s often a challenge to focus listening and concentration skills with a group of youngsters with diverse needs and itchy limbs. Building in legitimate body movements and sounds can help.
One of the most popular musical games is ‘switch’. Leaders start this off by making perhaps 2 or 3 consecutive body movements to some music with a strong beat. They then choose a confident volunteer to think of a sequence of their own. The rest of the group follows the leader. For example the leader might clap on the beat, every one in class would then follow and after the leader’s command to ‘switch’, everyone would change to knee tapping or whatever action is chosen, and so on. After three changes or so someone else takes over. Following on from this, children get into pairs and taking turns as the leader, mirror each others body sounds and movements, or play call and response games with body percussion or in response to recorded music. This can progress to games using untuned and the tuned musical instruments. A further way to extend this idea is to use it to explore emotions such as anger, happiness, sadness and playfulness.
Perhaps the key threads that underpin all other learning in Special schools are the improvement of communication, listening, co-operation and motivation. Music can be a successful catalyst for all these, but it still strikes fear in the hearts of many teachers. Teacher education has a role, but it is rare for student teachers to have a teaching practice in a special school. It is also a lamentable fact that there is very little training within Initial Teacher Education in either SEN or music. Thus new blood in schools often arrives with little confidence of what they can do in music lessons.
Here is an important role for music specialists. To train ordinary teachers through staff inset to use music in their classrooms instead of teaching all the music alone as a specialist throughout the school. Accessible, creative and inclusive music is easy for a non specialist to achieve with a little encouragement, mentoring and support from an enthusiast like you.