Latest News and New Resources

Bring history off the page and into the music room with the newly updated “The Victorians” Primary/KS2 Music Unit from Musical Contexts. A musical route into Victorian history. A cross-curricular music unit with real classroom purpose This KS2 unit links music learning with Victorian Britain, helping pupils explore the period through listening, performing, composing and discussion. Practical music-making keeps the topic active. The update makes it a fresh choice for primary t

Starting a GCSE Music pathway without a clear baseline can make planning feel like guesswork. Some pupils arrive with instrumental grades, some sing confidently, some know notation, and others have had little formal music training at all. A good baseline test helps turn that mixed picture into something useful. The Eduqas pre-GCSE Music Baseline Test from Musical Contexts is designed to help teachers check early understanding before pupils move deeper into GCSE-style work. It

The first few weeks of Year 7 music matter. Pupils arrive with different experiences, different confidence levels, and very different musical vocabulary. Some have played instruments for years. Others may have had only limited practical music-making at primary school. A strong opening unit needs to do more than introduce terminology. It needs to get pupils listening, singing, moving, discussing, creating, and performing from the start. It also needs to give teachers a clear w

Music teaching works best when the lesson starts with sound, movement, attention and curiosity, not with a last-minute hunt for a backing track or a rushed plan. That is the promise behind the new KS2/Primary fully-resourced music units from Musical Contexts: clear, classroom-ready support that helps every music lesson feel purposeful, creative and enjoyable. Primary music has a lot to do. It needs to build singing, listening, performing, composing, improvising, vocabulary, c

With the popularity of Michael in 2026, Musical Contexts offers a flexible performing arrangement of Thriller - perfect for those Year 9 groups at the end of the Summer Term! The Ensemble Performing Arrangements from Musical Contexts give instant 'play and go' three-part arrangements of musical classics designed for flexible ensemble performing in the music classroom. Each arrangement comes with a Lead Sheet giving treble clef melody line with chords and lyrics, a Full Score

Christmas Carols Keyboard Skills Volumes 1 & 2 from Musical Contexts contains treble clef melody line arrangements of 10 well-known Christmas Carols. Each carol is presented in four differentiated ways: (see sample images) treble clef single line staff notation and chords treble clef single line staff notation with fingering and chords treble clef single line staff notation with note names and chords treble clef single line staff notation with fingering, note names and chords

With Christmas being one of the busiest times of the year in School Music Departments, the Musical Contexts Christmas Music Cover Packs 1 & 2 offer 10 different and varied activities that can be quickly and easily set as Music Cover Work over the festive season. All of the activities and tasks within the Christmas Music Cover Packs can be completed without ICT and therefore can be completed in 'non-music rooms' and come complete with answers, solutions and mark schemes. There

Christmas Ensemble Classics Volumes 1-3 from Musical Contexts are a flexible classroom ensemble performing series featuring accessible and playable arrangements of five well-known Christmas songs in each volume containing a Melody, Chords and Bass Line format, ideal for both Secondary/KS3 and Primary/KS2 music classrooms. https://www.musicalcontexts.co.uk/christmas Each of the five flexible arrangements comes with 10 Performing Sheets and Scores: Melody part with lyrics and c

Baseline Assessment Tests for Years 7, 8 and 9 now available in paper-based formats Music Baseline Assessments | Musical Contexts

"All About the Bass" has now been updated to a new 6 x lesson fully-resourced unit within the 99 Zone. If you've not got 99 Zone access,...

Data collection from new Year 7 pupils made easy: Music and Me Year 7 Questionnaire . Available as both MS and Google Forms and Hard Copy...

"Keyboard Skills" has now been updated to a new 6 x lesson fully-resourced unit within the 99 Zone.

"Rhythm and Pulse" has now been updated to a new 6 x lesson fully-resourced unit within the 99 Zone. If you've not got 99 Zone Access, grab it here...

All of the Secondary KS3 Music units are undergoing a huge revision and update! Along with the new "Back in Time to the Popular Music...

Not sure if these will be helpful to anyone, or bring back the old terrors of "NC Level Descriptors", but found these in the depths of...

Purpose : This unit explores musical styles in Britain during the 1930’s and 1940’s and focuses on popular music during the Second World...