As well as being fun, singing has been shown to help build confidence in children as well as foster a sense of community within schools through regular whole-school singing activities. Sing up aims to raise ths status of singing and increase opportunities for primary school-aged-children throughout England to enjoy singing as part of their everyday lives. A comprehensive resource comprising of a free magazine and website, has been made available to make it as easy as possible for all schools to become involved.

Singing is a valuable learning tool. When children are singing they are taking in information and training the brain but they don’t think they are. They think that they are just having fun.

In this country there are many song collections, which offer curriculum support: counting songs, geographical songs, songs about historical characters or periods, songs about ‘green’ issues, songs that support physical development and songs that raise awareness of difficult issues. There is no doubt that singing is already used by many teachers to support learning across the curriculum but this can only be considered effective cross-curricular practice if the musical elements of learning are planned for and enhanced through the activity.

In the Song Bank, you will see that we have outlined cross-curricular links for each song. Additionally, as more songs are added onto the website, you will soon be able to search the Song Bank by curriculum topic. For example, if you are looking for new ways of introducing new topics to your class, you can find some help on the Song Bank!

Weekly singing assemblies and school choirs or singing clubs are the obvious ways to raise the profile of singing within your school, but can you think of any other ways? There are lots of published resources out there that use songs as the basis for teaching other curriculum subjects such as maths, history, science, French, geography and many other topics from Year 1 and upwards.

If you have any singing tips or resources that you find particularly useful, let us know what they are so that we can share them with other teachers.

If you'd like to suggest any songs for addition to the Song Bank, tell us! Just send an email.

With your help, Sing Up can ensure that singing becomes a real and valuable part of life in all primary schools!