Music

Intent

‘Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity’- National Curriculum, 2014.

 

At Liberty Primary School we are passionate about and committed to providing a music curriculum that engages and inspires children to develop a love of music, as well as their talent as musicians.  Children gain a firm understanding of what music is through listening, singing, evaluating, analysing and composing across a wide variety of styles, traditions and musical genres.

A progressive approach to lessons ensures that children are given the opportunity to develop their critical engagement with music, as well as an understanding and acceptance of the validity and importance of all types of music. In order to increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement, children are given many opportunities to perform to a variety of audiences.

 

Implementation

The music curriculum ensures children sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate. This is embedded in the classroom activities as well as the weekly singing assemblies, various concerts and performances and the learning of instruments.

 

Through the musical program Charanga, the music teacher is able to produce inclusive lessons for all children to access the musical curriculum in a fun and engaging way, further promoting a love of learning. Charanga lessons are planned in sequences to provide children with the opportunities to review, remember, deepen and apply their understanding. The progressive nature of the themes within Charanga allow the children to build upon what they have previously learnt, while challenging them to develop and extend this knowledge to take their creativity to the next level.

 

The elements of music are taught from Year 1, where children are introduced to the language of music in a fun and practical way. In the weekly music lessons children learn to dissect music and understand how it is made, played, appreciated and analysed. As they progress through the school, they learn how to play the recorder and a variety of tuned and untuned percussion instruments. Playing various instruments enables the children to use a range of methods to create notes, as well as how to read basic music notation. They also learn how to compose, focusing on different dimensions of music, which in turn feeds their understanding when listening to, playing or analysing music.

 

Impact

The impact of our clear, comprehensive scheme of work will ensure that:

• Children will achieve age related expectations in music at the end of their cohort year.
• Children will retain knowledge that is pertinent to music.
• Children will have the opportunity to express their creativity in the form of music.

 

The engaging and practical nature of the curriculum will promote a love of music and singing through:

• The participation in wider musical activities.
• Opportunities to perform to wider audiences to develop self-confidence and improve well-being.

 

Knowledge and progress will be recorded in the form of a class scrapbook that will follow each class through the school. It will highlight and document the children’s learning, as well as the progress the children have made. This will be kept alongside individual assessment logs maintained by the music teacher, in order to inform assessment at various points across the academic year.