What is Music?

Music is a creative art form; a universal language to express emotions through a collection of coordinated sounds.

Through the eyes of our children, Music is important because:

‘It helps us to develop our confidence by allowing us to express our feelings through sounds. Music gives us freedom with no limits.’

Early Learning Goals

Children are given the opportunities through:

Expressive arts and design: Exploring and using media and materials:

• children sing songs make music and dance, and experiment with ways of changing them.
• they safely use and explore a variety of materials, tools and techniques, experimenting with colour, design, texture, form and function.

Being imaginative:

• children use what they have learnt about media and materials in original ways, thinking about uses and purposes.
• they represent their own ideas, thoughts and feelings through design and technology, art, music, dance, role-play and stories.

National Curriculum

Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. A high-quality music education should engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon.

Intent

At St. Andrew’s Church of England Primary School, we aim for music to be an enjoyable learning experience where our children participate in a variety of musical experiences to build confidence. Through singing songs, children learn about the structure and organisation of music. We teach them to listen and to appreciate different forms of music. Children develop descriptive language skills in music lessons when learning about how music can represent different feelings, emotions and narratives. We also teach technical vocabulary such as volume, pitch, beat and rhythm and encourage children to discuss music using these terms.

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 inter-related dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.

Implementation:

The teaching and implementation of the Music curriculum at St. Andrew’s C.E. Primary School is based on the Early Learning Goals and National Curriculum and supported by expectations from Chris Quigley Milestones, ensuring a well-structured approach.

Our pupils should be able to organise their knowledge, skills and understanding on the following key concepts:

• to perform
• to compose
• to transcribe 
• to describe music.

These key concepts underpin learning in each milestone. This enables pupils to reinforce and build upon prior learning, make connections and develop subject specific language. 

The Charanga/Sing Up scheme of work is used from Year 1 - 6 to ensure a wide exposure to different genres of music, with lots of practical opportunities to explore and develop as musicians and singers.

Our Music curriculum is taught over two terms each year and the curriculum is designed to develop knowledge and skills that are progressive as well as transferable. We aim to ensure that, when appropriate, Music is integrated into other areas of the curriculum and the basic skills are taught throughout the year through cross curricular work.

The school also works alongside the Lincolnshire Music Service to provide specific instrumental lessons for children from Year 2 to Year 6 who wish to learn an instrument. A variety of opportunities are offered where children perform in whole school collective worship and also to parents and the wider community.

Additional opportunities are offered in music, such as the school choir and orchestra which perform regularly in school and at events in the local community.

Impact

Through the explicit teaching of the Music skills, teachers and the children assess their learning continuously throughout the lesson. At the end of each unit, teachers complete unit evaluations, assessing attainment against the Chris Quigley Essentials milestones to make informed judgements about the depth of their learning and the progress children have made over time.   

Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. A high-quality music education should engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon.

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 inter-related dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.

Peripatetic teachers visit the school to teach a wide variety of instruments.

Key Stage 1

Pupils should be taught to:

• use their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes
• play tuned and untuned instruments musically
• listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music
• experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the inter-related dimensions of music.

Key Stage 2

Pupils should be taught to sing and play musically with increasing confidence and control. They should develop an understanding of musical composition, organising and manipulating ideas within musical structures and reproducing sounds from aural memory.

Pupils should be taught 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.