NEW 10-Day Festive Composing Challenge: KS3 & KS4 Winter Music Resources

As the winter term progresses, maintaining focus and purposeful creative output in the music classroom can be a challenge. To help secondary music teachers keep KS3 students engaged through the final weeks of term, we’re pleased to launch our newest resource: The 10-Day Festive Composing Challenge.

This 20-page flexible pack delivers ten bite-sized composing prompts complete with exemplar listening (and playlist), step-by-step guidance and glossary.

Purposeful Composing for Ages 11–14

For the 10-Day Festive Composing Challenge, each day focuses on a clear musical concept, style, or technique, giving students a structured 4-to-8 bar target. They can then take this further, if they wish.

The ten prompts span a wide range of genres and compositional approaches, and include:

A Winter Journey (Programme Music)
Frostbite (Experimental)
Icicles (Jazz/Blues)
Festive Fanfare (Contemporary / brass ensemble)
Carolling (Vocal / a cappella)

What’s Included in the Pack?

The resource pack includes:

A4 colour poster to print off and display
10 individual work pages – one for each task. These include ‘Getting started’, action steps and toolkit with suggested chords and rhythms.
3-page glossary (key words are in bold throughout the pack)
Notated music for two of the activities
Summary page
Teacher notes: How to Use this Resource

Do I need to use particular software?

The pack is designed to be used with your usual classroom setup – percussion instruments, keyboards, notation software and DAWs. Some of the tasks require body percussion and voices whilst others lend themselves to using a DAW or notation programme. But you can adapt the tasks to suit your setting.

Flexible Classroom Delivery

Whether you need 15-minute lesson starters, a quick cover lesson, extension tasks for early finishers, or a springboard to launch a longer composing project, this pack provides practical ideas and steps across your department.