We think Music and ABC in particular is ideally suited for working in a composite class. In reality there are such big variations in different classes' abilities and experiences that some Year 3/P4 classes can be in some ways ahead of some Year 6/P7 classes. However there does tend to be an age related difference in some types of working eg the ability to work successfully in groups.
There will be four ways you can work.
1) Where younger children are doing an activity that is too old for them.
2) Where older children are doing activities too young for them.
3) Where you differentiate your class and set different age groups of children a different activity
and 4) Where you all do the same activity but children of different ages do it at different levels.
1) Younger children generally like doing activities with older children and taking part even if they can't do everything and don't understand everything. Make sure they fully understand they aren't expected to understand and do everything. You can make an older task easier by only asking them to use their voice, or to miss out harder elements. They can also be an audience for the older children.
2) When older children are doing activities that are too young they can act as assistants or, if they have done the activity before, try being teachers to show the skill/task to a younger child. They could also be the audience, or use percussion to make the task more challenging for them or to provide a backing group for the younger children. Finally they can see how they have improved compared to the previous year.
3) In some situations you can show an activity to older children and have them working independently in groups while you run an activity with younger children.
4) Particularly when doing creative activities in group (Year3/P4 upwards) it is easy to have younger children taking part and being led/organised by older children. You can incentivise this by giving groups rewards for integrating younger children sucessfully and imaginatively into their work. Younger children can often participate by just using the voice in a percussion activity, or by missing out more complicated symbols or sections.
We are developing some rolling 4 year programs, and very differentiated activities suitable for multi-composite classes.
If you want to be told when these are ready please email tom@abccreativemusic.com