Music

Intent

Our Music curriculum has been tailored to meet the unique context of our school. It is designed to be broad and balanced, providing all pupils with the opportunity to master their learning and deepen their knowledge, making sense and giving purpose to why we learn about the different styles, genres and pieces of music. Teachers will provide pupils with challenging vocabulary and big questions, which will help to deepen their understanding and knowledge of musical notation and a range of tuned and untuned musical instruments.

We believe that music through our Charanga curriculum helps pupils to express themselves and to become confident performers in singing and in using instruments. The music curriculum allows pupils to gain appraisal skills of a range of genres of music along with compositional and listening skills. They are offered a range of opportunities to explore a range of instruments and a range of composers using a wide variety of musical styles. Children are introduced to improvisation to be able to think about different rhythms they can use and how they can change a given beat, song or piece of music.

As a school we recognise the importance of giving pupils in an inner-city school to receive opportunities to perform in the local area with links with a local sixth form for our yearly year six graduation. We deliver the music curriculum through cross-curricular opportunities for children to develop their own skills in creating music in a range of styles.

We aim to build high levels of competence in music through developing the skills of:

• Appraisal
• Performance
• Composition
• Improvisation
• Transcription and Description

Implementation

Statutory requirements for the teaching and learning of Music are laid out in the ‘Expressive Arts and Design’ section of the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (2021) and in the National Curriculum in England: Key Stages 1 and 2 (2014).  The principles, outcome and content of the requirements are placed at the heart of the schools’ programme of study in Music. 

Each class teacher follows and delivers the scheme of work Charanga which teaches a range of skills to children using a variety of music genres and appraisal skills which encourages them to think about the music and instruments. Children are encouraged to think about how they can find the beat, pitch and learn to perform a song each half term based on a different music genre using a range of instruments, and voices. They learn through a range of actions, to find the beat and sing a range of notes in pitch with the music.

Our Year 4, 5 and 6 children have access to our steel pan lessons with a specialist teacher where over a term they learn to play a range of musical pieces and learn to hear a range of musical notes whilst reading musical notations. They carry out performances twice a year to demonstrate their musical skills.

Our school choir have learnt to sing in a range of styles and to perform in parish and local community events. 

Our after-school club of recorders is where children from Years one to four have access to lessons where they learn to read and play musical notation and to play together as an ensemble using a range of beats. They listen to a range of music to help to develop their awareness of the number of beats, rests and timings whilst playing.

The school are developing the resources for children and there are a range of untuned instruments to allow pupils to learn how to play a set rhythm and number of beats to a piece of music. The school is well stocked with recorders and a group of children are learning skills to play a range of tunes linked with our Charanga curriculum and recorder books.

In Music, assessment of pupil progress is taken against the age-related expectations for music. The outcomes of the assessments are used by class teachers to evaluate the quality of coverage of the ARE in music and to inform aspects of learning that need to be strengthened to improve the quality of provision and to enhance pupil progress. This includes assessing pieces of music composed by the children alongside their understanding of musical vocabulary and the range of tempos and pitches.

Impact

The Music curriculum is broad and balanced with a range of cross-curricular opportunities which allows pupils to become confident performers who have a good understanding of how music is composed and developed. The curriculum offers opportunities for children to enhance their musical vocabulary with a greater understanding of musical notation, number of beats and how to recognise the range of pitches, dynamics and tempos.

Pupils will be able to use their skills to compose their own music as well as take inspiration from different genres and musicians alongside the different African styles of music. They will use their communication skills and learning to transcribe and describe their feelings about a range of styles of music whilst also learning about music from a range of cultures.