Music

Music

Intent  

Music is a powerful, unique form of communication that can change the way children feel, think and act. It brings together intellect and feeling and enables personal expression, reflection and emotional development. Music promotes children’s spiritual, cultural and social development which we promote actively at St. Michael’s Primary School. 

St. Michael’s delivers a broad and balanced music curriculum, in line with national requirements, which enables pupils 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.  

• Learn to sing and use their voices. 

• Create and compose music on their own and alongside their peers.  

• Have the opportunities to learn a musical instrument. 

• 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. 

Implementation (Organisation across the school including EYFS) 

EYFS lessons have been written to coincide with the revised statutory framework. They provide activities to support adult-guided learning covering the developmental programmes for ages 3–4 and 4–5 across all seven areas of learning and development in the EYFS (Communication and Language; Personal, Social and Emotional Development; Physical Development; Literacy; Mathematics; Understanding the World; Expressive Arts and Design). 

In EYFS, pupils will be taught to: 

• Discover their voices through story and play. 

• Create new, personal songs to well-known tunes. 

• Explore and play using basic percussion instruments. 

All pupils within KS1 and KS2 are taught music in line with the requirements of the national curriculum. 

In KS1, pupils will 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 interrelated dimensions of music. 

In KS2, the focus for music will be to teach pupils to sing and play musically with increasing confidence and control. They will be able to develop an understanding of musical composition, organising and manipulating ideas within musical structures and reproducing sounds from aural memory. 

In KS2, pupils will be 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 interrelated 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 

Enrichment and Resources 

• Fully accessible Kapow Primary scheme of work. 

• All pupils are encouraged to participate in additional musical opportunities to enhance their learning and development.  

• The school choir is open to children from Year 3 to 6 and meets on a weekly basis to allow pupils to enjoy singing together. The school choir also performs in public on a number of occasions throughout the year. 

• All year groups have the opportunity to perform each year through various festivals and celebrations e.g. Christmas and Harvest Festival. 

• Year 6 production. 

• The following extra-curricular enrichment opportunities are available: school choir and recorder club

• The subject leader is responsible for the management and maintenance of musical resources, as well as for liaising with the head and the school business manager in order to purchase further resources. 

• Musical resources which are not required on a daily basis, and those in relation to key whole-school topics, will be stored in the music area.

• EYFS have their own ‘music basket’ in which they keep basic percussion instruments for use in their lessons. 

• Musical equipment and resources required for lessons must be retrieved by the class teacher so they are easily accessible to pupils during lessons. Resources are to be returned to the music room at the earliest convenience. 

• The subject leader will undertake an audit of musical equipment and resources on an annual basis. 

Impact (Assessment, Recording and Reporting) 

• Assessment will be undertaken in various forms, including the following: Talking to pupils and asking questions, discussing pupils’ work with them in the form of conferencing, marking work against the learning objectives, pupils’ self-evaluation of their work and peer marking, where pupils are encouraged to give positive and constructive feedback to their classmates. 

• Formative assessment, which is carried out informally throughout the year, enables teachers to identify pupils’ understanding of subjects and inform their immediate lesson planning.  

• In terms of summative assessments, results will be passed to relevant members of staff, such as pupils’ future teachers, in order to demonstrate where pupils are at a given point in time.  

• Parents will be provided with a report about their child’s progress during the Summer term every year. For music, this will involve an attainment chart in which the child’s attainment level is ticked appropriately. 

• The progress of pupils with SEND will be monitored by the class teacher and reported to the SENCO. 

Inclusion and Differentiation 

• All pupils will have equal access to the music curriculum.  

• Gender, learning ability, physical ability, ethnicity, linguistic ability and/or cultural circumstances will not impede pupils from accessing music lessons.  

• Where it is inappropriate for a pupil to participate in a lesson because of reasons related to any of the factors outlined above, the lessons will be adapted to meet the pupil’s needs and alternative arrangements involving extra support will be provided where necessary.  

• All efforts will be made to ensure that cultural and gender differences are positively reflected in lessons and the teaching materials used.