The English writer Aldous Huxley said that after silence, the closest thing to being able to express and unable to express is music. After an outbreak of COVID-19, we need music to soothe people's hearts and wounds, stabilise their emotions, keep their mood happy, get rid of inner stress and panic, and improve the body's own immunity.

YWIES Beijing provides a comprehensive and balanced education for every child. Art is the key to the progress of human history and the foundation of YWIES's educational philosophy and goal. So we make sure that children learn all kinds of music and art. Paying attention to art and music is one of the ideas of YWIES education. Violin education has always been a compulsory course of YWIES. Playing violin helps students develop co-ordination of their hands and brain. Teachers and schools are also willing to create more opportunities for students to help them realise the stage dream of music, from YWIES's music class to the university in the future.

1. Violin Learning: Group Lessons Are Better Than One-on-One Teaching

With the rapid development of music education in recent years, the new teaching mode of violin collective class can better meet the practical needs of violin education.

Violin teaching is different from other subjects in that students are fixed in their seats. Violin learning requires students to make movements and sounds. However, in collective teaching, due to the large number of students, how can the teacher make students orderly and uniformly follow the instructions and commands without producing too much disturbance to each other? It puts forward very realistic requirements for collective teaching management of violin. In the collective class, the teacher and the students as a whole link the class, practices and the performance, the three parts the violin learning, to form a strict system. Students are more interested in learning, as they exchange experience with each other, and improve the ability to co-operate.

Generally speaking, the most important thing in violin teaching is to teach the students the core content of violin art, that is, skills and sensibility. At the same time, we can also see that group teaching is the development trend of violin teaching in the future.

Suggestions for violin students and their parents

• - Learn the violin step by step; Pay attention to the basic skills; Do not rush
• - More company, more encouragement, more communication
• - Develop good habits of practising the violin
• - Provide performance opportunities to increase confidence
• - Often listen to music

2. Choir: Improve Students' Singing Skills, Co-operation and Aesthetic Ability

The purpose of our choir teaching is to improve students' singing skills, basic knowledge of music, co-operative ability and aesthetic ability.

In order to provide more opportunities for children to exercise, learn and practise, so that more students who love music and singing can join the choir, we open enrolment on choir for Grades Two to Eight, with a total of more than 50 places. Since the choir was founded, we have performed many works, such as “Edelweiss”, “Auld Lang Syne”, “Something Just Like This”, “The Brightest Star in the Night Sky”, “Greetings of the Seasons”, “Me and My Country”, etc.

We have also participated in many different forms of performances, from the stage of the school auditorium to the performance of a professional concert hall. Our school choir has been transformed into an orderly, united and professional choir team.

Our little choir members learnt how to sing different parts, and developed a good habit of co-operation and team spirit.

Skills they learnt include:

• - Singing songs confidently, harmoniously and expressively;
• - Distinguishing different forms of singing;
• - Understanding command gestures, and simple rhythm command diagrams;
• - Analysing and appreciating multi-part songs;
• - Understanding and experiencing the concepts of co-operation, appreciation and aesthetics in choir teaching;
• - Understanding the musical mood, and emotional theme of the work.

The most important thing is to improve students' aesthetic taste of music, share the joy of choir, and promote the all-round development of students' musical accomplishment.

3. Music Course: The Three Sections Including Singing Performance, Music Appreciation and Music Creation

The YWIES music course aims to realise YWIES's philosophy, cultivate an appreciation of music as a global art form, and promote appreciation of it, and cultural respect and understanding.

Our music course is integrated with international pedagogies of Dalcroze, Kodaly and Orff, enabling students to acquire and consolidate a range of basic musical skills, knowledge and understanding through listening to, playing and creating music.

• Singing Performance:

YWIES selects domestic and foreign classics and excellent musical works, and integrates them into different artistic categories such as dance, poetry, drama, film and television, and fine arts. We use a variety of international music teaching methods at home and abroad, and use Orff percussion instruments or other instruments in singing or performing, to stimulate students' interest in music learning, with colourful teaching content and lively teaching form, to create an international teaching atmosphere for students.

• Music Appreciation:

Students feel and experience music through auditory activities. The flow of music shows the certainty without semantic meaning and the concreteness of the form of things, so as to provide wide and free imagination space for students. Therefore, we take music aesthetics as the core and interest as the motive force when designing the appreciation courses.

• Music Creation:

We emphasise music practice, encourage music creation, combine theory and practice, and highlight personality. In this course, students not only need to apply their musical knowledge and cognition, but also need to give play to their imagination and creativity.

During the outbreak, our students also produced many classic music works.

We lead the students into the music world with curiosity, respect the students' choice and performance, encourage the students to express their understanding and feelings of music freely and boldly, and then interact with the interpretation and feelings of the music masters. In this way, students deeply realise the rich spiritual life music brings to them, which is the music course of YWIES.