Music – curriculum information

Our aim is to develop the confidence and competence of each child in Music. Our goal is for them to be passionate, curious and confident about their own music learning abilities when they finish the primary school phase of their education.

We will help them develop and demonstrate substantial progress in the 5 key skills necessary for learning Music

• Singing (developing pitch, melody, rhythm and control individually and as part of a group)
• Listening (exploring feelings and emotions in response to music, giving opinions, identifying instruments, structure, musical features)
• Composing (improvising, composing, notating: representing sounds through symbols, standard and non-standard notation)
• Performing (singing, playing instruments, individual and groups, practising, rehearsing, presenting, recording, evaluating)
• Musicianship (understanding music: pulse/beat/metre, rhythm, pitch/melody, tempo, dynamics, timbre, texture, structure/form)

We aim to ensure that pupils of all abilities develop solid foundations in these key music skills – properly preparing them for the next stage of their musical learning journey. These skills will develop children’s ability to understand what they hear and read and enable them to express themselves in speech and written form.

Teaching and Learning Overview

Our whole school approach to music teaching and learning is in line with the recommendations of the National Curriculum and the requirements outlined in the Department for Education Model Music Curriculum.

The National Curriculum for music aims to ensure that all pupils:

• perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians
• learn to sing and to use their voices, to create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, use technology appropriately and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence
• understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the interrelated dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations

By the end of key stage 2, pupils should be able to:

• Play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and playing musical instruments with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression
• Improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the inter-related dimensions of music
• Listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory
• Use and understand staff and other musical notations
• Appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians
• Develop an understanding of the history of music.

Music is taught in a whole-class setting by the class teacher or HLTA and is therefore not reliant on one key member of staff, with the exception of Year 4 where a specialist teacher from the Music service will teach the children once a week. Teachers plan their lessons using the Charanga scheme of work and can supplement this with their own ideas and experience and those of their colleagues.

The lessons are designed to motivate, captivate and interest children from the first moment. They have clear, achievable objectives and incorporate different learning styles. SEN children have access to the curriculum through variation of task, grouping or support from an adult.

Each class has a timetabled lesson of at least forty minutes per week.

A singing assembly will also take place each week delivered by the music lead.

Music lessons include:

• Listening clips of a variety of genres of music
• Opportunities for children to play both pitched and unpitched instruments
• Opportunities for performance
• Differentiated desk-based consolidation activities
• Worksheets at different levels of challenge are provided throughout each teaching unit

Each lesson will focus on a combination of the 5 key learning skills.

Charanga is updating their scheme in line with the Music Model Curriculum and the subject lead will ensure staff have appropriate skills and knowledge to deliver the curriculum.

Resources

The Charanga scheme is a fully online resource enabling all teachers in all classes to have instant and continuous access to all the resources they need to teach whichever lesson they choose.

Where appropriate worksheets completed by the children will be kept in their wider curriculum book and passes to next teachers at the end of the school year. Teachers can also upload scans of pupil written work along with audio and video recordings of pupils speaking and presenting Music to a centralised secure file store (Seesaw).

Assessment of Pupil Learning & Progression

• Each unit ends with an assessment checkpoint
• Evidence of final performances
• Written responses to listening activities

Monitoring and evaluation

The subject leader monitors the effectiveness of the music teaching provided throughout the school via regular informal observations with feedback given to teachers delivering music lessons. The Subject Leader and class teacher will together monitor the learning and progression made by pupils across the key stage.

The subject leader will also ensure that subject knowledge is appropriate and encourage staff to seek training or give guidance.