Purpose: A sense of pulse is fundamental, a prerequisite of almost all musical activity.  As such, it needs to be understood from the outset and then developed and strongly reinforced throughout Key Stage 3.  This unit introduces or reintroduces the concept of pulse through a variety of experiences which include pulse games and other rhythmic activities, the creation of patterns, including ostinati, and repetitive rhythmic textures – cyclic and polyrhythms, listening activities and the composition and performance of class and group rhythm pieces.  Pupils explore how polyrhythms are used in West African Drumming and perform a polyrhythmic piece, “Sun over the Sahara” and use the names of African countries to perform and create their own polyrhythms, notating these using rhythm grid notation. 
 
Outcome: Pupils develop an understanding of pulse being a fundamental upon which music is built and performed.  They develop a feeling for and an awareness of a regular pulse and understand and use the term ‘beats per minute’ to describe different pulse rates of music from different times and places.  Pupils distinguish between beat, pulse and rhythm, understand and use the articulation marking of an accent, use rhythm grid notation when performing and recording rhythm and pulse patterns, conduct different pulse patterns and are introduced to syncopation.
 
This fully-resourced KS3 Secondary unit comes complete with 6 fully-resourced lesson plans, each containing a Lesson Plan, Worksheet and PowerPoint Presentation with all embedded audio files (also available separately as MP3 and WAV files).