I have a student doing her grade 4 soon and I'm looking for a good unaccompanied song for her to do. It needs to be in English. Any advice appreciated.

Sorry I'm not a teacher just a mum, but recently bought the abrsm songbook for daughter (aged 8 gr3). The unaccompanied folk songs all have translation and I believe can be sung in English to grade 5 or 6. Some of them are unsuitable for her but depending on how old your student is they may be more suitable. I also found several on amazon but didn't buy them as I am not familiar with the pieces and was unsure if they would meet the abrsm criteria. However, I'm sure you would know what you were doing here. The book was onlt ?10.99 and we will hopefully get all we need from here. Hope this helps a bit, if it doesn't I'm sorry but didn't want your post unanswered

At age 11 my daughter sang The Ash Grove for her unaccompanied song at grade 4 and got some very nice comments and a high mark. However, that does not mean it would (necessarily) be a good choice for any and all female pupils....

P.S. For each of her exams (Grades 1 to 6) she and her teacher just chose something from "Sing Together!" (Appleby and Fowler), though I know not everyone here is a fan.

Halka, sorry to change the topic but what is it that people don't like about sing together. I ask as I was thinking of ordering a copy as I've seen it listed in the syllabus. My daughter only started last year and so I don't know much yet.

Thanks I'll look into them. She's only 10 but she has a strong voice. She is a little fussy though and I'm trying to find something she'll enjoy singing as all the ones I can think of or I have in my songbooks are a little boring.

Well... I think it was actually Seer Green (in what I believe was a previous incarnation, and in response to a query of mine) who said something to the effect that the songs weren't proper folk songs, and teachers who used the book lacked imagination... but I may be completely misremembering.... Perhaps he will come by and comment. By the time your daughter gets to grade 6 I can assure you that you feel all the nice songs have been exhausted, and the barrel is being well and truly scraped to find something. However, I do think it's handy sightreading practice for the early grades.

I may have said that. Certainly Sing Together is an odd collection of songs - many don't seem to me to be folk songs (certainly in the Board's definition) as they say "words by... music by..." To me, it's a collection of songs which children were singing in schools in the 1950s. I wouldn't knock it entirely though and I do use it. There are lots of lovely folk songs out there, but I'm not convinced they're the ones in Sing Together. I tend to use this book quite a lot these days - I suppose that they're what I consider to be 'proper' folk songs.

Thank you both for helpful comments. We have very little music at the moment so will buy both copies.