A Kodaly-Inspired Curriculum

At Mayflower, each class is taught music is taught for a minimum of one hour per week. In addition to this, children have access to a portal of tools, resources and modelled examples to continue their learning and development throughout the week in the form of spaced practice.

Children are encouraged to explore, self-reflect and share their learning using video logs, performances and conversations in order to capture their thoughts and evaluate their progress throughout each concept.

Our music curriculum encourages children to engage through regular structured skills and knowledge based lessons, providing an opportunity for pupils to develop their musicality, as well as drawing on new skills. With singing as our key driver, our children learn a wide variety of music knowledge and skills through song, structured delivery and musical performances.

Principally, Kodaly said that music belongs to everyone and the best way to begin teaching it was through the voice because everyone has one, and it is free. Underlying this is the knowledge that through singing one accesses their ‘inner hearing', one of the most vital attributes of any musician. As humans can sing we should see musical instruments as an extension of that ability to sing. Singing is the first instrument. The concept is a simple one; Learn through the voice and body first and then transfer those skills to instrumentation.

Over the course of a child’s time at Mayflower, they are taught a bank of carefully selected songs which contain the specific musical elements outlined in the curriculum. The Kodaly approach to teaching and learning bases itself on three stages, prepare, present and practice. 

Music has a particularly special formative power: it not only helps to develop the child as an individual, but it is also a means to integrate the child into the culture, environment and society immediately around them and beyond.

^{Ryan Jenkins, Music Subject Lead and curator of the MCA Kodaly-Inspired Curriculum}