The format of a starter or plenary could be one (or a combination) of the following:

• Card sort – Print out the digital file and copy it onto card. Cut out the cards so that there are an adequate number for the students (or sets of cards for pairs/groups of students) in your class. You may wish to laminate the cards for future use, and enlarge the cards as appropriate.
• Worksheet/handout – Provide a copy of the worksheet for each student in the class to complete. It may be useful to prepare a number of worksheets at the beginning of a term to save preparation time before a particular lesson.
• Presentation – Display the presentation on an interactive whiteboard or an overhead projector (OHP). Alternatively, copy the slide onto an overhead transparency. The information could be displayed for the duration of the starter as reference or guidance for students.

Each starter develops one or more musical concepts, ie key musical ideas. It is important that the learning objectives of the lesson are established before any activities are planned. It should then be possible to find a starter activity which matches the objectives of the lesson. To choose a starter by concept, or to view a full list of the concepts in Starters and Plenaries for Music, visit the Resources section.

To use the starters and plenaries in your lessons, you need plenty of desk space and, for some activities, a piano or another musical instrument. Any other more specific resources required for an activity are listed under this heading.

Guidance on how to deliver each activity, and teacher’s notes, are provided under this heading throughout the resource. The experience of using the activity ideas in the classroom will inspire further development and your ideas will evolve in response to the needs of those you teach. Templates for creating further activities are provided in this introductory section.

Digital files for use with the starter are also provided where appropriate under this heading throughout the resource. A full list of the digital files can be found in the Resources section.

Note that many of the activities bear repetition the very next lesson or at a later date with the same group of students, in order to reinforce the concepts. Others are best divided into bite-size chunks and the activities spread over a number of lessons. For example, Chromatics can be used to test and develop students’ knowledge of a range of concepts: scales and modes, chords, enharmonic equivalents, tones and semitones, intervals, sharps and flats. It is not advisable to cover all of these concepts within one lesson. Rather, the activity should be tailored to the objectives of the specific lesson.

Some activities provide a springboard for further work on a topic. Ideas for taking the starter further are provided here.

Each starter is followed by suggestions for the plenary session and subsequent classroom activities. However, how the teaching sequence might develop between the starter and the plenary is infinitely variable. Whichever direction the lesson takes, the material in this resource will allow the Music teacher to start lessons purposefully and to close them in an appropriate manner. It is left to the teacher to chart the precise route to be taken between these two points.

Some starters may last for just a minute or two, prior to the main body of the lesson, while others may last for 20 minutes, with an imperceptible transition into the rest of the lesson. Similarly, the plenary may be an activity which accounts for a substantial portion of the lesson, or it may be a brief series of discussion points. The most important thing is that starters and plenaries fulfil their purpose, not as self-contained tasks in their own right, but rather, as reinforcement of the lesson’s wider learning objectives.

The activities within Starters and Plenaries for Music are aimed at students between 11 and 16, so the level of difficulty can vary significantly from one starter to the next. By referring to the key concepts listed for each starter, it is possible to choose an activity which is appropriately challenging. In addition, many of the starters have extension tasks, which can be used to differentiate the activity for more able students or can be used as part of the main body of the lesson.