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Bring Japanese music to life in your classroom with this comprehensive 6-lesson Scheme of Work designed to develop cultural understanding, ensemble skills, and musicianship.

This professionally designed resource pack includes everything you need to deliver the topic with confidence, whether you’re a music specialist or a non-specialist:

What’s Included

• Full Medium-Term Plan / Scheme of Work with clear lesson objectives, outcomes, and differentiation.
• Six ready-to-teach PowerPoints, packed with engaging visuals, cultural context, accompanying videos, and practical tasks. Each lesson begins with a listening journal suggestion - but this can be changed by you as necessary.
• Curriculum Companion Student Booklet (lesson workbook + revision guide + evidence log).
• Written Knowledge Check Assessment that is structured and visually similar to GCSE papers - around 30-40 minutes in length depending on the class.
• Skill Check Performance Assessment with assessment Criteria aligned to national curriculum expectations and performance-based outcomes.
• Knowledge Organiser that contains the ‘need to know’ core knowledge needed for this topic, as well as additional reading.
• PLC - Personal Learning Checklists so that students can ‘check off’ their learning and know what to revise.

What Students Will Learn

• Explore the sounds, traditions, and instruments of Japanese music (koto, shamisen, taiko, shakuhachi, etc.).
• Develop keyboard skills and ensemble performance techniques.
• Build understanding of pentatonic scales, harmony, and texture.
• Rehearse in groups to perform their own Japanese-inspired performance on keyboards playing Sakura in three-part harmony.

How It Can Be Used

• As a complete unit for KS3 Music or an enrichment project.
• As a cultural capital module to broaden students’ global understanding of music.
• To support performance, listening, composition, and analysis skills in one cohesive topic.

Practical Note:
For copyright reasons, certain audio tracks are not included in the PowerPoints. Links to freely available performances are easily found online through Spotify or YouTube.

Why choose this resource?
This scheme has been classroom tested, carefully sequenced, and designed to keep students engaged from start to finish. With ready-made materials and clear student-facing tasks, you’ll save hours of planning while ensuring high-quality delivery.

File types:
PPTX, PDF, DOCX, XLS - easy to edit and adapt to your setting.