'Schools and teachers play a fundamental role in helping children see beyond the brow of the hill, exposing them to cultures and opportunities beyond their peripheral vision. Engaging and exciting children through enriching, exciting, fulfilling and valuable experiences in, through and about music, opens up possibilities for current and future learning…Given all of the benefits and evidence about the power of music, notwithstanding the most important – the significant impact of music learning itself – it is difficult to fathom why any school wouldn’t aspire for music to be at the heart of the school and curriculum.'
There is a plethora of research about music education and the positive benefits it can bring to many areas of our lives, from learning to read to enhancing our wellbeing123. As well as musical learning being its own entity, music has a wide variety of positive benefits for drawing children into learning across the curriculum, yet the potential for this is untapped in many classrooms. Learning through music is often the way in which less experienced teachers feel confident to start incorporating music into their classroom. To be clear, using music as a vehicle to enhance learning in other areas of the curriculum is not necessarily contributing to music education, and music education in its own right is fundamentally important in the curriculum. It all depends on the focus and the learning drawn out. Using Barnes’ (2012,2015) model of cross curricular learning, this part of the toolkit shares some examples of how music could be beneficially used and potential resources are signposted. In the end, however, the ways in which music is incorporated and the resources chosen are down to the creativity of the teacher in charge, so it is time to explore the options in your own classroom!
