Year 8 · Music · beta

Minor, major and developing keyboard skills

This unit introduces major and minor scales and explores what makes music distinctive and memorable. Pupils develop keyboard technique and rehearsal strateiges, learning more complex melodic lines with accidentals and varied articulation.

This is an attributed Oak National Academy lesson sequence, not a completed or academically approved DASKEREL course. Supporting transcripts may depend on video, images, practical equipment or teacher explanation. Follow each lesson’s supervision guidance. For religious education and RSHE, follow the school’s syllabus, policy and safeguarding procedures.

Prior knowledge

  • Pupils have experience changing hand position fluently
  • Pupils know how to find natural and sharp notes on the treble clef and play them on the keyboard
  • Pupils have experience play a melody with hand position changes kept in time
  • Pupils understand the term chord and can play triads
  • Pupils know the rhythmic values minims, crotchets and quavers and that they can be dotted
  • Pupils know that melodies can be major or minor and how this sounds
  • Pupils know the music is built in phrases
  • Pupils have experience keeping time and shaping phrases

Source curriculum references

  • Play and perform confidently in a range of solo and ensemble contexts using their voice, playing instruments musically, fluently and with accuracy and expression
  • Improvise and compose; and extend and develop musical ideas by drawing on a range of musical structures, styles, genres and traditions
  • Use staff and other relevant notations appropriately and accurately in a range of musical styles, genres and traditions
  • Identify and use the interrelated dimensions of music expressively and with increasing sophistication, including use of tonalities, different types of scales and other musical devices
  • Listen with increasing discrimination to a wide range of music from great composers and musicians
  • Develop a deepening understanding of the music that they perform and to which they listen, and its history

Oak source metadata. DASKEREL has not independently verified school-level coverage.

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