Songwriting Workshops
We are delighted to launch our Education project Songs without Borders aimed at KS3 students in languages and/or music.
Phase 1 of Songs without Borders is a collaboration with the University of Birmingham School and Elizabeth Stafford of Music Education Solutions to deliver our first ever songwriting workshops in Spring 2018.
We worked with three groups from Years 7, 8, and 9, on the Baudelaire poem ‘A une Malabaraise‘ (To a Malabar woman) exploring lots of ideas about lyrics, types of music, and singing in more than one language. Our first ever group of student songwriters have produced their very own songs – based on Baudelaire’s poem. They learnt from Exsangue‘s own track, and developing lyrics in English while still borrowing some of Baudelaire’s French words too. Each song explored a theme from the poem – travel, food, love. Find out more from the Association for Language Learning report.
Phase 2 is the release of a TEACHER EDUCATION PACK for KS3 Teachers of French and Music. Music based activities are offered in order to teach French in an interactive and creative way. The activities can be delivered as part of an enrichment block (for 6 hours that can be delivered at once or in several sessions) or for end of year projects. Teachers can follow the suggested progression guiding students to compose their own songs in French but they can also use the activities as one-off lessons to complement their teaching. An extra activity based on poetry and digital tools is suggested at the end of the book.
