Song writing
Songwriting has become a big part of our school. Children love writing songs, performing and recording their own words and expressing themselves. We have children who spend their own time either at home, lunchtimes or playtimes-with their friends or on their own writing songs. They then spend time with an adult putting music to the lyrics and creating their songs. The school has been very successful in competitions. Many of the songs are anti-bullying statements for the Northants Anti-bullying songwriting competition run through www.notivate.org.
Some of our songs have been recorded at the stables, MK and are used in assemblies for the whole school to sing-we are very proud if a song makes it all the way to be professionally recorded! Karolina in year 6 wrote the song "Shoot for the Moon" that has been adopted as the school anthem-that is a particular favourite!
In year 4 our children take part in a 6 week Notivate program where in groups the children write songs, record them professionally and produce a CD of their songs to keep-again, all through the hard work of John Bowman at www.notivate.org. All our Notivate inspired songs can be heard here (there are quite a few on soundcloud!) Roade Notivate Songs-soundcloud
Notivate do incredible work with students here in the UK and in other parts of the world-such as Uganda. As John says:
The Notivate Singer/Songwriter Programme is a creative music course for children aged 9 – 13 years, in which they write and record their own songs. The programme enables children to express themselves, explore their feelings and perhaps try something for the first time. It offers children the chance to feel better about themselves and is about music, but is more about “me”.
Year 4 also get the opportunity to learn to play an instrument as a whole class-this has been violin and more recently ukulele!
Songwriting is special to us-it enables us to express our thoughts and share our views.
Here are some of our songs from recent times-the list gets longer as each new one is finished! There are many others that could have been added-there is a lot of songwriting going on!
Uplifting songs:
Bedroom Rock star-Katie, Ella, Disha and Karis
Anti-bullying songs:
Its just what we do- Chloe, Jodi and Amanda
Whirlwind-Jodi, Rhiannon and Lacey
You're Not Going To Bring Us Down-Ella, Disha, Ella and Katie