Music
The video below explains the importance of music education:
Music at our school
Intent (The ‘why’)
Rationale:
Music is a powerful, unique form of communication that can change the way pupils feel, think and act.
Music education helps prepare children for a lifetime of music, whether it be music making and a career in a globally important industry or encouraging a development of skills which develop their creativity, even if it is simply enjoying listening to music throughout their lives.
Our music curriculum is based around the main dimensions of music (pulse, rhythm, pitch, temp, dynamics, timbre, texture, structure, notation) which the children revisit and deepen their understanding of, throughout their primary education.
Children will listen to, appraise, learn to sing, play instruments against the backdrop of a variety of genres and styles of music from different historical times and contexts. This will enable them to develop a range of practical skills (such as playing a tuned instrument, improvising, reading musical notation, learning a variety of musical vocabulary) but also provide them with a broad understanding of musical culture from around the world, its’ importance and relevance to moments past, present and future.
Implementation
Curriculum Organisation:
Our music curriculum is structured to ensure full coverage of the National Curriculum. All music teaching is taught through the Charanga Musical School programme. This curriculum has been designed to ensure that knowledge and skills within the subject are taught progressively and revisited over time; this revisiting of knowledge and skills leads to deeper learning. All lessons have clear learning objectives which are shared and reviewed with the pupils.
All pupils undertake a minimum of 45 minutes to 1 hour of curriculum music lessons every other week, taught by the class teacher, using the Charanga music scheme of work.
As well as the curriculum time, children also participate in a singing assembly once a week. All children are involved with Christmas singing productions to members of the public, families, and friends and are provided at least one other performance opportunity in the year to either peers or public, as decided by the class teacher, music lead, and SLT.
In Key Stage 2, we also provide each child with an opportunity to learn how to play an instrument for a whole term. This is taught by a professional music teacher to the whole class, for an hour a week, culminating in chance to show off their skill in an end of term performance. The instruments are plastic and an excellent introduction to playing the ‘real thing’, whilst being super light and ergonomically designed for smaller hands. These are an example of some of the instruments we use.
pBones
Brightly-coloured Bb plastic trombones – lightweight but unmistakeably a trombone – a wonderful way to get young children playing!
DooDs
Doods are easy-blowing and comfortable to hold and play with similar finger holes to a recorder.
Extra-Curricular music opportunities
Children in Years 1-6 can also join various extra-curricular music clubs such as choir, recorders, and music ensemble club.
For further information on the Music curriculum, please contact our subject leader, Abby Simister, on [email protected].
Thank You NHS song
As part of their music learning journey, our Year 4 pupils wrote a song to say thank you to NHS staff for their hard work and dedication during Covid 19. Please see the video below: