Subject leader: Mrs Lelean
Our Curriculum Drivers
Intent
The National Curriculum for music aims to ensure that all children:
- Perform, listen to, review and evaluate music
- Be taught to sing, create and compose music
- Understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated
At St. Mary’s, we believe that music is an essential part of life and that the opportunity to engage in musical experiences is crucial for the development of the whole child. We inspire a love of learning through music.
Learning music develops all aspects of a child’s learning, from the physical action of using an instrument to the mathematical skills needed to keep a pulse. These abilities are directly transferable to other areas of the curriculum, allowing them to flourish and enjoy life in all its fullness. These skills will be invaluable in their future life.
At our school, children have access to music through weekly classroom music lessons and hymn practise sessions, as well as further opportunities to engage in peripatetic music lessons and extracurricular musical activities such as our choir.
We also endeavour to provide wider performance opportunities with other schools and in the local community.
Implementation
Our music curriculum is progressive throughout the school and ensures that children are given opportunity to sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate.
This is facilitated through weekly classroom music lessons, taught by a specialist music teacher, as well as through our weekly hymn practise sessions and a variety of concerts and performances throughout the academic year.
Throughout the school, children are taught to understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the inter-related musical elements: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.
Our music programme provides children teaches children to 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.
Children will also learn to sing and to use their voices appropriately and to create and compose music on their own and with others, as well as having the opportunity to learn a musical instrument and use music technology appropriately.
In KS1, children are 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
In KS2, children are 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
Impact
Throughout a child’s journey at St Mary’s, their musical skills and understanding are built upon year after year.
Benefits experienced, through a high standard of music teaching, include achievement, self-confidence, communication and creativity. Music will also develop an understanding of culture and history.
Children are taught to access music with a confidence and an appreciation.
Above all, St Mary’s endeavours to provide children with an enjoyable music education.
How to support your child at home?
At St Mary’s, we believe that a strong home-school partnership is key to successful appreciation of music.
To support your child’s learning at home:
- Encourage your child to listen to music from a wide range of genre and culture.
- Talk to your child about music that you hear in everyday life (music is everywhere – films, adverts, video games, on the radio etc)
- Attend a concert or music performance
- Promote a desire to learn a musical instrument
