In this lesson, pupils will be encouraged to listen closely and respond to how a piece of music in a film scene captures the tone of the events. The activity will work towards equipping them with bespoke musical vocabulary that they can use when speaking about a piece of music. This language is a transferrable skill across the other lessons in this resource series. By harnessing this language, learners can build confidence in speaking about music across a range of contexts.

This music resource introduces students to the concept of expressive performance using a selection of content from musical feature films. Learners will be introduced to the Expressive Performance dice and question card that will help them to delve deeper into musical performances in a wider variety of ways. Finally, learners will be able to summarise what makes a good expressive performance by creating a written guide to support their own performances.

In this music lesson learners will practise their technical listening skills enabling them to confidently apply music-specific language. Students will use their technical listening to critically evaluate film music including clips from La La Land (2016) and Jaws (1975). The Technical Listening activity sheet is carefully designed to scaffold their learning and the session concludes with the option to watch an additional clip and complete careers-focused home-learning.

In this lesson students will learn how sound creates dramatic impact in films. They will be introduced to the terms diegetic and non-diegetic sound and, using several film clips, will explore how these are used to create an atmosphere in a scene. They will then create their own soundtrack for a clip from Dunkirk making sure they include diegetic and non-diegetic sound. As a home learning task, students are asked to research the role of a film score composer. The powerpoint that accompanies this lesson can be downloaded from the Into Film website.

This resource immerses the class in the world of Disney’s Moana 2 using sounds and music as stimuli to learn about the main characters in the film and allow learners to demonstrate and develop their musical abilities using collaborative, creative and fun activities while drawing on rhythmic concepts and styles. With links to both the music and KS1 maths curriculums, the Bring the Beat activity sheet first guides learners through the profiles of the characters, who have been assigned a particular musical sound, which can be recreated through body percussion. Learners then work individually to decode a pattern of character images on the activity sheet into a series of sounds, creating a musical sequence that can be performed to the class. In addition, they can identify and extend the pattern of sounds in each sequence. Working in groups where appropriate, learners also devise their own musical key with a new set of images and corresponding sounds, allowing them to make a new musical sequence and create their own repeating body percussion pattern. This can then be performed to the class as they try to guess what sound comes next in the sequence.