Resource: BBC Ten Pieces
I’m in London this week representing MusicFirst at the Music & Drama EXPO - one of my favorite conferences of the year. I always love coming over to the UK. I love their approach to music education here, and it’s a great chance to catch up with the UK team and visit my family.
Whenever I am in England, I always look forward to watching programs on the BBC. I love British TV shows - always have, but the BBC does so much more than just television. One of my favorite BBC productions is called Ten Pieces. This award winning resource highlights ten pieces of classical music that every kid should know, but they do it in a highly engaging and well produced way. It is aimed at 7-14 year olds with a series of exciting films, lesson plans, instrumental arrangements & live events that revolve around the ten pieces. The BBC has done this program for a few years now, so there are now 40 pieces of music to choose from.
As an example,. one of the highlighted pieces is Symphony No. 1 in E minor (3rd mvt) composed by Florence Price. Aside from biographical information and Fast Facts, there are lesson plans, instrumental arrangements, PowerPoint slides, and a downloadable MP3 to use with students. These resources are created by teachers for teachers and they are GOLD. There are also suggested extension activities for teachers to help extend the learning. One very cool feature is that the site allows teachers to upload their students’ creative efforts so that they might be featured on the site. Very cool.
Another one of the pieces highlighted is one of my personal favorites - Mambo from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. Again there are wonderful lesson plans, simplified instrumental arrangements for students of all playing abilities, videos and downloadable MP3s. Amazing.
I highly recommend bookmarking this site and using the resources with your students. In the meantime, I’m going to get back to catching up with many members of the MusicFirst UK and global teams who are over here in London with me.
From Left to Right: Richard Payne, Mark Welland, me, Michael Avery, Matt Allen, Marcel Pusey, Peter Lee, Tim Wilson.