Music is an integral part of Alver Valley Schools and is weaved throughout the academic year in many ways. The children participate in music lessons with their class teachers. They take part in singing assemblies, access the learning of instruments with specialist music teachers from Hampshire Music Service on the ‘Listen to Me Project’. Some children choose to take brass or keyboard lessons with music teachers.

Each week our music leader plans out the music we listen to as we enter and leave assembly. The music genre varies and in the past year has included Opera, Jazz, Soul, Classical, Film Soundtracks, Rock and even Pop. Children have questions to consider as they listen to the music suited to the piece such as:

What instruments can you hear?
What feeling does this song have?
How does the song start? What emotion? Why do you think that?
Can you hear the major/positive sounding key to the music?
How does the pace make you feel?
Do you feel like the mood changes?
Do you feel the hope in the music? Explain your thinking.

Every year the Year 1 and 2 children of Alver Valley Schools celebrate Christmas through a new and innovative live Nativity story performance. The children have the best, most festive time, singing and performing alongside their friends. It really brings the school together as they sing their hearts out, especially once they’re in their costumes! They practise hard for weeks and finally get to share their beautiful singing voices with their families.

In the Junior School children have the opportunity to perform each year in the school summer production always a real highlight. In 2023 the children put on a simply amazing performance of Joseph with full stage, sound and lights production.

Animals Written and Performed by Year 2

This song is the fantastic work of 2EW who are now composers because they wrote this song about animals and Alver Valley School. The class has only a short while with Mr Robinson (our choir coach) each week and they wrote all the words and the tune together as a class. We are very lucky to have time to sing together every week and hopefully we will have more performances to share later this year so watch this space!

Year 2 Space Music

Year 2 started by learning an alien chant and learning about timbre (the different sound you can make with instruments, objects or even your voice). We then moved on to learning a song about Michael Colins, the ‘loneliest man ever’ who was left on Apollo 11 while Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Learning this song we started to focus on texture – the layering of sounds to make music. Following this we listened and responded to Mare Tranquilitatis by Vangelis to discuss and explore the sound used to make this piece of music about space. Using this as inspiration, we created our own space music and even wrote the music using graphic notation.