PPA Carousel Taster in Birmingham

Last Friday I had the pleasure of teaching a Junior Jam PPA cover taster session at a school in Birmingham. The school requested a carousel taster which Junior Jam offer and consists of three Junior Jam PPA cover teachers rotating classes with each teacher delivering a different subject. I was there to teach music and was joined by Emily who was providing the computing provision and Georgia who was delivering PE. The kids were in for a fun and action-packed Friday. We started the day with the year 3’s who were super excited to have such a fun morning ahead of them. In computing, students were introduced to the basics of music production and in groups of two were taught how to create and record a drum beat on an iPad. They then were shown how to build their instrumentation by adding in a guitar and an electric piano. In PE, students were taught the basics of boxing using gloves and pads and ran boxercise drills to increase their strength and fitness. In my music lessons we focused on Hip Hop. I started with an introduction to the genre discussing its origins and culture, which was followed by some ‘old school’ hip hop examples. Students were then tasked with writing and performing a rap. Usually I find that students are a little reluctant to put pen to paper and write something when tasked to do so, but when the task is to write a rap it’s a different story. I was super impressed with the originality and imagination of all the students I taught on Friday. They were not a shy bunch either with most students desperate to perform and share their raps at the end of the lessons. The themes varied widely with raps about family, pets, school, computer games and one about fried chicken. This is a fun PPA cover lesson to teach and is hugely popular with students of all ages.