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Charanga Training

Charanga 
Charanga has a plethora of CPD guides on its platform, however this page is dedicated to  SoundStorm’s own guides and interpretation on how to get the most out of Charanga tailored to your level of experience.

Our recommendations have not been reviewed for a while, however the SoundStorm team plan on updating their ‘best of’ guides to include these new features. Please watch this space whilst the academic year 2026-7 gets underway.

However, the information and guidance below could still help you in your teaching, so we will leave them below, until refreshed resources are available. 

Our recommendations

At various points throughout the academic year 2020/21, Charanga became an invaluable tool for home learners with a huge spike of student YUMU registrations (400 to in excess of 8000 within a matter of weeks). As a result and in response to feedback of confidence levels in using the resource,  a series of free, remote, CPD sessions were arranged, including support on some of the more advanced features of Charanga focused on getting the most out of ‘My Workspace’ and YUMU. We had a fantastic response from teachers, with over 40 of them getting involved! Click on the links below to access these training guides.

Our guidance for newcomers to Charanga can be accessed by clicking on the link below:

Introduction

Charanga’s CPD & Training Centre

There’s no doubt about it, just like the rest of this award-winning resource, Charanga’s CPD & Training Centre is pretty thorough – so thorough it may be a bit daunting to know where to start! Just for you, we’ve sifted through and picked out our Top 5 (actually, 6!) useful training sessions for you to watch, or read through:

  1. Do We Need a Catch Up Curriculum? Whether specialist or non-specialist, if you only watch one webinar (post pandemic), make it this one. Excellent discussion to contextualise and explain how musical learning is different for other subjects in the curriculum.
  2. Setting Expectations in Music Lessons. A common thread in non-specialist class teacher’s call for help is knowing how to assess if children have learnt a musical skill – this webinar will help. A useful webinar about why and what is being taught, some ideas on differentiation and how to identify if children are learning.

  3. Deciphering School, Blended, Hybrid and Home Teaching. Very good for preparing for the possibility of a range of teaching scenarios and to ensure learning is not disrupted. We all hope that restrictions won’t return, however, it can’t hurt to be fully prepared.

  4. No Singing? No Blowing? No Problem! Along the same preparation theme as #3, this is a webinar with clear explanations and examples of how Charanga can offer variety, flexibility and Covid mitigations to suit a school’s individual guidance and rules based on their risk assessments. It provides tips relating to teaching music safely in school covering singing/playing instruments etc. This webinar also touches upon how pupils can use Charanga whilst working from home.
  5. Student Access: Ready Steady Go! Everything they need to know about setting up YUMU.
  6. and finally… Being the Music Lead. We invited Charanga to deliver this session to our members as an online CPD – and this is the recorded version. Informative, thought provoking and useful, this is a useful watch for every music lead in a Primary setting.

For the more experienced Charanga user…

During summer 2020, our Music and Cultural Education Coordinator Jo, held a remote ‘Intermediate level’ CPD for Primary teachers on getting to grips with Charanga’s My Workspace functions. The aim was to assist teachers in their understanding of using the tool effectively. This session included:

  • how to save resources,
  • how to create and organise lessons, units and their student groups
  • ideas on how you might like to share, organise and set activities during lockdown.

Wanted to come along but missed it? Never fear – see below! My Workspace was the first session of a 2-part CPD – the second of which focussed on specific resources.

Workspace Training

Part 2 of our Intermediate training covered some of Jo’s favourite Charanga resources, outside of the main Scheme (or our ‘Top Resources’). The aim was to assist teachers in their understanding of some of Charanga’s hidden gems and provide ideas on how they might be able to use them for their home learning activities. Now we’re back, they’re still useful! 

Click on the link below to be taken to the training guide.

Top Resources