What's included in the Celebrating Black Music Styles Whole School Assembly PowerPoint resource and why is it useful?

Celebrating Black Music Styles Whole School Assembly PowerPoint is a slideshow that explores how Black artists and communities have shaped music in Britain, from calypso and reggae to UK garage and grime. The content includes 12 slides with teacher notes, covering how music moves us, Caribbean music and the Windrush generation, sound systems, reggae and lovers rock, pioneers of Black British music, UK garage, grime, Black British music today, how music brings us together and follow-up activities. It links to music learning about different styles and their history, and works well during Black History Month.

Caribbean Roots

How people from the Caribbean brought calypso, ska and reggae to Britain, how Jamaica's sound-system tradition reached London in the 1960s and how lovers rock emerged in the mid-1970s, with questions such as "Why can music be a powerful way to express feelings or ideas?"

From Pioneers to Grime

Trinidad-born pianist Winifred Atwell, soul and R&B artists such as Omar and Beverley Knight, the rise of UK garage in 1990s London and grime in East London, with artists such as Dizzee Rascal.

Music Brings Us Together

Rap, R&B, Afrobeats and amapiano, and how new styles grow through sharing between people, places and generations, asking "How might sharing music help people understand one another?"

How do our whole school assemblies work?

Our whole school assemblies are PowerPoint slideshows that follow a similar structure: an introduction, questions to get children thinking, the key points of the topic and reflection time. They're paced to suit a primary school assembly and work best on a whiteboard, projected out to the hall. You can use them:

• as a whole school assembly, from EYFS up to KS2
• as a class assembly
• as a teaching PowerPoint when you want to cover an event or topic in your own classroom

The majority of our assemblies include teacher notes and guidance to support delivery, and because they're pacey, you can adapt them to however long your assembly lasts.

Adapting the Assembly for Your School

Every assembly is editable, so you can add, remove or change slides to suit the needs of your school. We cover religious events, seasonal topics, values such as kindness, friendship and tolerance, science, history, PSHE, music, significant people and sporting events, so you can choose the assemblies that fit your school year.

Supporting Learning at Home

Families can carry the conversation on at home by asking children about their assembly: what they heard, how it made them feel and what they think about it.

You can explore more of our whole school assembly resources here.