Welcome to the music page of our website!
At Tranmere Park we are immensely proud of our music provision.
We are Music Champion School which we were awarded by Artforms Leeds in recognition of the wide range of musical opportunities that we offer the children, both in classroom lessons and through our peripatetic offer and other opportunities.
As well as the singing, playing, performing, improvising, composing, listening and appraising that takes place in our classroom lessons, there are many more musical opportunities for our children to be involved in. Just one example of these is our entry into the Leeds Schools’ Singing Competition in which we were runners up the first time we entered. We won a voucher from Out if the Ark music which we spent on some lovely new singing resources. (You may have heard your children singing some of the French songs that we bought – they’re extremely catchy!)
We offer a wide range of peripatetic music lessons for children from Year 3 upwards which we try to run at lunchtimes to avoid the children having to miss classroom time. However, some instruments are so popular that we have to book the teachers for a bit longer!
Latest News
Performance Assembly
In our most recent performance assembly, we listened to fabulous performances from some of our musicians. Brother and sister Ruby and Oliver both performed beautifully as soloists on the piano and we heard a piece from Felix that he had just played in his Grade 4 exam. We had Alex and Jess as guitar soloists and a Year 3 trio guitar performance from Sam, Charlie and Jacob. All of our guitarists learn in school with Get into Guitar. Maisie and Olivia sang indiviually for us and our singing Group Treblemakers sang a beautiful old Euovision winner, ‘A Little Peace.’ It was a lovely assembly. Thank you very much to everyone who auditioned.
The Dunwells
The Dunwells were back for another visit and this time worked with Years 3 and 4. The children took part in song writing workshops with them and then performed their songs for everyone at the end of the day. Year 3 wrote a song about their forthcoming residential to Malham and Year 4 wrote a song about looking forward to Summer. The Dunwells performed for us as well and now that they have signed to Simon Cowell we tried not to be too star struck!
Year 3 Ukelele
Year 3 showcased what they have been doing in the whole class ukelele lessons with a lovely performance. They have learnt so much! They sang lovely songs which taught them the names of the parts of the instrument and how to play among many others. What a fantastic performance!
Feel the love in Year 6
Classroom lessons are going really well in Year 6. They have recently learnt ‘Make You Feel My Love and performed it with soloists, glockenspiels, keyboards and guitars. Great work Year 6. Keep it up!
World Music Instruments -Year 4
Year 4 have recently had some fun learning about some new world instruments, namely the cajon and djembe. They took turns using them and learning to how to play them properly. They also gave a fantastic performance of Let Your Spirit Fly in their class assembly, which included voilin, flute, cahon and glockenspiel performances.
Performance Assembly
Our recent performance assembly was amazing and featured violinists Lexi and Felix, a keyboard performance from self taught Amelia, solo singers Dougie, Gus and Sia, piano from Alice, Ruby and Dara, clarinet from Daniel as well as some fabulous dancers. Well done everyone. Get practising if you would like to audition for the next one!
Graphic Notation
After listening to and looking at some graphic notation compositions recently, Lower Key Stage 2 have been writing their own recently and performing them for their classmates. They did a really good job!
Early Years Music
It’s always lovely welcoming our youngest children into school and starting music lessons with them. Early years have lots of fun using untuned percussion instruments, starting and stopping, playing up high, down, low, in a straight line and round and round in a circle!
Guitar Performance
The children who take part in ‘Get into Guitar’ lessons at school did a performance assembly for us so that we could hear them play and see how much fun they clearly have learning to play the guitar. Thank you to them all for some fabulous entertainment.
Leeds Youth Music Festival Celebration Concert 2023
A group of children from Tranmere Park did us proud when they performed in the Leeds Youth Music Festival Celebration Concert at Leeds Arena. They learnt a selection of songs, one especially written for the children of Leeds and performed them at an evening concert alongside children from schools across the city. It was an awe inspiring event which I’m sure will leave a lasting impact on all the children who took part and their families. Well done Freya, Zoe, Jessica, Jess, Edward, Isabella, Lexi and Rowan.
Fun in EYFS
EYFS had fun adding sounds to the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. They made a pop with claves when the caterpillar burst out of the egg and some lovely eating sounds with shakers, which got longer and longer as he ate more and more, along some fantastic body percussion eating sounds. They ended with a lovely celebratory chime bar sound when the caterpillar turned into a beautiful butterfly.
The Dunwells are back!
We were treated to another visit from local band The Dunwells who delivered two songwriting workshops with Year 4 and Year 5. Both groups wrote songs about the imminent half term break. Each song had a very different mood and it was great to hear them being performed in a special assembly at the end of the day. The Dunwells sang a few of their own songs for us as well and had everyone singing along.
What a fantastic way to end a term!
Performance Assembly
Our performance assembly was a brilliant opportunity for some of our talented musicians to perform for school, parents and carers and Tamsyn Durrant from Art forms Leeds, who was particularly impressed. Thank you to Daniel and Thomas on keyboard, Aiden and Oscar on guitar, Felix and Lexie on violin, Bea on flute, Ella on the trumpet, Dara on piano and Lexi, Lily and Dougie, our singers.
Kingfishers Class Assembly
Kingfishers performed Happy by Pharrell Williams in their class assembly. They were amazing.
Music Display Board
Take a look at our music display board which shows how we demonstrate progression in music.
Drum Workshop
Year 4 took part in a djembe drum workshop with the amazing Dom from Artforms Leeds. School was full of the sound of djembe beats!
Treblemakers Sing at Guiseley Theatre
We took ten of our Treblemakers to perform at Guiseley Theatre as part of the ALPT Festival. (We wished we could have taken them all but we were only allowed ten.)
They sang songs on the theme of ‘Going for a Walk’ beautifully and made us proud.
(Here Comes the Sun, Let’s Go Fly a Kite, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough and 500 Miles)
The Dunwells
We had a visit from the amazing local band The Dunwells. They did a songwriting workshop with Year 5, who performed the song they had written for us at the end of the day. This was followed by our very own (short) Dunwells gig! Everyone loved it. It was a fantastic way to end our half term and Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
We are going to be the stars of our own school CD!
We have spent the last few weeks rehearsing a selection of pop, call and response and French songs, to name but a few and then spent a day in the recording studio (the school hall) recording songs with Sam from ‘We are Heard’, who said that we were one of the best schools that he has worked with. We started with a whole school song, then each class was recorded, followed by Treblemakers (our singing group) and finally the staff.
Any money that we make from the sales of the CD will be spent on new music resources or experiences for our children. Zoe won the competition to design a cover for the CD.
Herons class just before their recording of ‘Comment t’appelles tu?’.
Music Nuggets on Tour
Our year six children were lucky enough to spend a day with ‘Music Nuggets on Tour’. The focus of the day was songwriting via a variety of activities. The children collaboratively wrote a song about travel across a body of water and thought about the perils of travelling as a refugee juxtaposed with the hope of a new start upon arrival. The musicians were particularly impressed with all of the children in their ukulele and guitar workshop and with the ideas and vocabulary that they generated for songwriting. Here’s a taste of their music making.
Peripatetic Music
Let’s take a look at our peripatetic music provision starting with guitar.
Paul Curtis from Get into Guitar teaches twice a week, usually in the music room and sometimes in the outside classroom when the weather is nice. His lessons are very popular and his guitar groups have even serenaded us in the dining room at Christmas time with their best Christmas tunes!
Gaile Dawson from Artforms, Leeds teaches keyboard in our music room. She’s new to Tranmere Park. Her lessons are extremely popular too.
Guy Rickarby, also from Artforms Leeds teaches violin. He uses one half of the staff room for his lessons so anyone having their lunch on the other side of the staff room is serenaded by violins!
Freya White from Music for Schools Foundation teaches brass and woodwind. Freya has been working with us for a while and lots of her students left for high school but we are very happy that she has lots of new recruits starting soon.
Here are some of Freya’s aforementioned new recruits.
As well as peripatetic instrument lessons, we are also lucky enough to enjoy the talents of Melody Reed, who is a professional musician. She runs ‘Singing for Spelling’ sessions where children are helped to embed spellings through songs and actions. She also runs sessions where she uses music to support general well being and confidence.
Treblemakers
Our singing group, Treblemakers meets once a week. They are a fantastic bunch of enthusiastic singers! We squeeze our rehearsals in on Thursday mornings in Bluebirds classroom. In the past, Treblemakers have performed at our Summer and Christmas fairs and at Guiseley Theatre and Yeadon Town Hall. At Christmas we enjoyed learning Electric Dreams by The Human League, a version of which featured in a Christmas tv ad for a famous department store. We have recorded ‘Let’s Go Fly a Kite’ for our school CD and are looking forward to some of the group performing at the Aireborough Learning Partnership Schools festival.
Here’s a short composition by Y1/2. It’s a song about Seed dispersal which they’ve been learning about in Science.
Here are a few pictures of some EYFS children enjoying music in their classroom.
Take a look at some KS1 children playing chime bars in their classroom lessons. We are very lucky to have a well stocked music room which has whole class sets of chime bars.
Here they are during a lesson on the theme of notation, reading numbers and performing claps, clicks, stamps and rests brilliantly.
We enjoy composing in our classroom lessons. Here are some KS2 children performing their compositions about capacity which they had been learning about in maths. We like to be cross curricular whenever we can!
We encourage children to use instruments that they are learning in music lessons whenever possible. Here are some upper KS2 children practising for a group performance of Feliz Navidad.