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Music and story

Topics Year 4/5
This unit is part of Benin (900 to 1300CE) Everyday Life

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Objectives

History

  • Address and sometimes devise historically valid questions about change, cause, similarity and difference, and significance.
  • Understand how our knowledge of the past is constructed from a range of sources.
  • Undertake an in-depth study of a non-European society that provides contrasts with British history - The Benin civilisation.

D&T

  • Select from and use a wider range of tools and equipment to perform practical tasks accurately.
  • Select from and use a wider range of materials and components.

Music

  • Play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts. Improvise and compose music for a range of purposes.
  • Appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians.

Lesson Planning

Investigate the music of the time and understand the importance of music in the Benin culture. Learn that they did not have a written language and children did not go to school, but instead, in the evening, the people in each village would collect around the village square or family hearth and tell stories. Make a Benin asologun (stringed instrument) and/or egion (musical bow), and take part in a recital.

Teaching Outcomes:

  • To find out about everyday musical instruments played in the Kingdom of Benin.
  • To make replica musical instruments.
  • To play replica musical instruments in an improvised recital.

Children will:

  • Be able to explain what musical instruments were used in the Benin kingdom and why.
  • Make replica musical instruments that produce a sound.
  • Play handmade musical instruments in an improvised recital.

You Will Need

  • Cardboard boxes
  • Sticks (bendy, e.g. hazel or willow)
  • String
  • Elastic bands

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