Music
Intent:
At Holywell, we are MUSICIANS. We want our children to love music. We want them to have no limits to what their ambitions are and grow up wanting to be music producers, songwriters, composers or rockstars!
We want children to have access to an engaging and fun music curriculum reflecting the world they live in now, but at the same time giving them access to musical styles throughout history.
Children are able to listen and appraise a variety of musical styles alongside performing pieces and creating their own compositions through the use of instruments and technology.
To achieve this, all children access a variety of musical games, songs, instruments and music workshops giving them practical hands on experience. We hope children continue to grow in confidence as they progress through the musical curriculum and become passionate in their responses to music. Added to this, we want children to become more independent learners within this area, reflect upon their learning and develop resilience within the musical world.
Our curriculum design is based on evidence from cognitive science – that learning is most effective with spaced repetition and that retrieval of previously learned content is frequently and regular to increase both storage and retrieval strength.
We want to equip our children with not only the minimum statutory requirements of the music National Curriculum but to prepare them for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.
Implementation:
Teachers use the National Curriculum, Ventrus Curriculum Approach and Charanga Music School as a basis for planning. Within this, some of our teaching and learning for music is linked to other subjects where appropriate but it is often taught discretely.
- Charanga is used by teachers to drive children’s development within music. Every year group will build upon the learning from prior year groups therefore developing depth of understanding and progression of skills. This serves as a base to aid and enhance our teaching, but is not intended to be rigidly adhered to.
- Teachers make professional judgements about when to adapt, miss out or add additional materials where this would benefit learning.
- Lessons provide opportunities for children to develop practical skills and progress by listening and appraising, singing, playing, composing, and performing.
- Pupils are given the opportunity to listen to a range of music through various in and out of school opportunities
- Performances take place within various school activities and are integral to the school ethos.
- Instrumental groups will be encouraged to perform in Assembly whenever performances are ready to be heard.
- There are a full class set of glockenspiels and a number of other tuned instruments including drums, ukeles and more.
- A portable sound system with Computer, Radio Microphones and CD player available.
- In order to support children in their ability to ‘know more and remember more’ there are regular opportunities to review the learning taken place in previous topics as well as previous lessons.
Through Expressive Arts, children are taught to sing songs, make music and dance. Children are given opportunities to experiment with ways of changing sound and develop an understanding of pulse rhythm and pitch.
Children follow a scheme of work from Charanga Music School and enjoy listening and responding to different styles of music, learning to sing, joining in with nursery rhymes and action songs which leads to playing classroom instruments and performing for others.
Children are also encouraged to use everyday objects to make music and create sound, children enjoy exploring our music wall outdoors and experiment with sound using objects made from different materials such as wood, metal and plastic. Children experiment with water buts, kettles and pans, piping, guttering, bin lids and many different types of beaters.
Impact:
The impact of this music curriculum will lead to progress over time across key stages relative to a child’s individual starting point and their progression of skills.
Our music curriculum will hopefully foster a love and increasing enthusiasm for the subject amongst our children, and a potential for life- long musical study.
We ensure that children who are achieving well, as well as those who need additional support, are identified, and additional provision and strategies are planned in and discussed with class teachers.
Ongoing assessments take place throughout the year. Teachers use this information to inform future lessons; ensuring children are supported and challenged appropriately.
We work to improve staff knowledge and confidence, leading to a stronger profile in music and raised pupil achievement.