Music

Music is important because it stimulates creativity and imagination, making it a pleasurable activity, which can provide fulfilment throughout life. It provides knowledge of the work of a range of musicians and composers which contributes to a cultural understanding. It provides sensory experiences and a unique way of understanding and responding to the world, allowing children to communicate what they see, feel and think.

Intent

Our music curriculum is ambitious and designed to give all pupils, particularly disadvantaged pupils and including pupils with SEND, the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life.

2) It is coherently planned and sequenced towards cumulatively sufficient knowledge and skills for future learning and employment.

3) The curriculum is successfully developed to be ambitious and meet the needs of pupils with SEND, developing their knowledge, skills and abilities to apply what they know and can do with increasing fluency and independence.

Implementation

At St. Thomas More First School, we base our teaching on the National Curriculum Programmes of Study and this is particularly helpful with ensuring that there is continuity and progression. The programmes of study set out what should be taught at Key Stage 1 and 2 and The Foundation Stage programmes of study for Expressive Arts and Design are set out in the EYFS. The music scheme Charanga is used to support the planning in all Key Stages.

Foundation Stage

Pupils in the Foundation Stage develop their skills in the Expressive Arts and Design area of the EYFSP. They will begin to sing a repertoire of songs, explores a range of instruments and experiments with how they can change them. A range of activities related to their everyday experiences are provided. Children are encouraged to make, explore and investigate instruments inside and outside of the classroom.

Key Stage 1

In Key Stage 1, the skills include using their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes, playing tuned and untuned instruments musically, listening with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music and experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the inter-related dimensions of music.

Key Stage 2

Key Stage 2 work on implementing key skills in Music which extend and reinforce the skills from Key stage 1.

The skills include 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.

Children in KS2 also learn the ukulele for one term.

Children have taken part in musical performances at the Palace Theatre Redditch and Young Voices at Resorts World in Birmingham.

We have a ‘Musician of the Month’, which celebrates the work of a particular musician or composer. A range of styles are included. So far, the children have listened to works by The Beatles, Taylor Swift, Alan Menken, Areatha Franklin,Glenn Miller, The Pentatonics and Holst.

National Curriculum – Music key stages 1 to 2 (publishing.service.gov.uk)