James Hill is a Canadian musician and educator who together with others set up a nation-wide music curriculum using ukulele as the ‘tool’ to impart musical concepts and skills. I came across him many years ago when first exploring options other than recorder to give our students something different and engaging. It has proved a popular and successful program to implement in the Years 3 & 4 and has been enjoying a revival and popularity in a lot of schools now and in public and community music playing.

What I like about it is that that we can explore concepts of harmony and melody and it encourages singing and songwriting. It is also is  affordable instrument that students can acquire for their own use at home and with the wonderful resources available now on the internet continue their music making outside of school and even when they move on to high school. At one Ripponlea Estate Christmas event a few years ago one of the solo acts was a Ripponlea ex- student who was singing and playing an original christmas song on her ukulele!

It has helped immensely as well that popular artists like Vance Joy have chosen ukulele as their accompanying instrument for their own songs and ‘Riptide’ has certainly become standard repertoire for a lot of budding musicians.

Here the students are following strumming patterns using the the chords they are progressively learning.

The whiteboards are for them to write their own strumming patterns to share with each other and the class as a whole in a ‘call and response’ way.

Our goals by the end of this term are to be able to play at least 3 chords on the ukulele in various strumming patterns, to be able to play and sing the School Song and to have made up our own musical composition in an ABA form.