Intent
Our 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.
Implementation
Our music curriculum engages and inspires pupils to develop a love of music. It aims to increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement in music. As pupils progress, they develop an engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best music composed. They develop their technical, expressive and composing skills in small steps, reviewing and revisiting prior learning before progressing their learning. Please see the long term plan for curriculum detail.
Impact
Reception- Pupils listen and respond to different styles of music. They can listen to and sing along with nursery rhymes and songs. They listen to and learn to play untuned percussion instruments and tuned bells, and share and perform their learning with friends and parents. This includes opportunity to perform in World Nursery Rhyme Week World Nursery Rhyme Week and in the Nativity performance at Christmas. They are taught the solfege hand signs to support their constructive skills.
Key stage 1- Pupils can use their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes. They begin to play untuned instruments musically and learn to play the ocarina and drums. They listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music, and experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the interrelated dimensions of music. including the solfege hand signs. Pupils have the opportunity to perform in a Nativity play at Christmas time.
Key stage 2- Pupils in 2023- 2024, are beginning their journey of playing and performing in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and recorders in year 3/4 and the ukulele in year 5/6, with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression. They improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the interrelated dimensions of music. Pupils learn to listen with attention to detail, and recall sounds with increasing aural memory. They begin to use and understand staff and other musical notations. They appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians, and develop an understanding of the history of music. Pupils also have the opportunity to take part in an end of year production and in alternate years, visit the O2 to take part in Young Voices.