Music

“Music education opens doors that help children pass from school into the world around them – a world of work, culture, intellectual activity, and human involvement. The future of our nation depends on providing our children with a complete education that includes music.”  – Gerald Ford

MUSIC - INTENT

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.

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.  
• Gain a firm understanding of what music is, through listening, singing, playing, evaluating, analysing and composing across a range of historical periods, styles, traditions and musical genres.

MUSIC – IMPLEMENTATION

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.   

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.  
• 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. 

MUSIC – IMPACT

The impact of the Music curriculum at St. Mary’s can be seen in the following ways:

• Our children are engaged and excited by our music curriculum.  The skills that they are taught equip them with a range of skills to enable them to appreciate music throughout their lives
• Our children have become confident performers, composers and listeners, who are able to express themselves musically at school and beyond
• Our children show an appreciation and respect for a range of music from a variety of genres across a variety of generations
• Our children demonstrate and express their enthusiasm for music
• Our children progress throughout the music curriculum which enables them to meet the expectations outlined at the end of each key stage for the national curriculum.

St Mary’s is using the ‘Charanga’ scheme of work. This is a digital resource where performing vocally and with instruments is central to lessons.

Music-Development-Plan-St.-Marys-School-Broadway.pdf