Curriclum Area: Music

Subject Leader: Mrs Beth Rowland  

Music Intent Statement

Intent

“Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. 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.” (The National Curriculum)

Music teaching at Brookfield Primary School using the Lancashire Charanga Music Scheme.  This follows the requirements of the National Curriculum; providing a broad, balanced and differentiated curriculum and ensuring the progressive development of musical concepts, knowledge and skills.  At Brookfield, we recognise that music plays an important part in helping children to feel part of a community, and so we provide opportunities for all children to create, play, perform and enjoy music both in class and to an audience. Through assemblies, concerts and key stage performances children are able to express their emotions and showcase their understanding of how to perform with awareness of others. Lessons enable children to develop their skills, appreciate a wide variety of musical forms, and begin to make judgements about the quality of music they hear and create.

The aims of our music curriculum are to develop pupils who:

• Enjoy and have an appreciation for music.
• Listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions.
• Listen to and evaluate the work of great composers.
• Can sing and use their voices to create different effects.
• Create and compose music, both on their own and with others.
• Use a range of musical language.
• Make judgements and express personal preferences about the quality and style of music.
• Have opportunities to play a wide variety of instruments, both un-tuned and tuned.
• Use technology if appropriate.
• Take part in performances with an awareness of audience.

Implementation

Music teaching at Brookfield  delivers the requirements of the National Curriculum through the progression of skills and Charanga scheme of work. Teachers tailor the Charanga units to fit around key stage performances and can use the ‘freestyle’ element of the package to provide thematic, cross curricular lessons that also follow children’s interests. Music lessons are broken down into half-termly units and an emphasis is placed on musical vocabulary, allowing children to talk about pieces of music using the correct terminology.

Each unit of work has an on-going musical learning focus and lessons usually follow a specific learning sequence:

• Listen and Appraise
• Musical Activities (including pulse and rhythm)
• Singing and Voice
• Playing instruments
• Improvisation / Composition
• Perform and Share

Our progression model also follows the same learning sequence to ensure all interrelated elements of music are covered and implemented.

 Music teaching at Brookfield is practical and engaging. A variety of teaching approaches and activities are provided based on teacher judgement and pupil ability. Lessons typically involve a combination of the following; games, songs, challenges, listening to music and discussing music, playing a range of musical instruments, performing back, finding the pulse and composing music using notation sheets or technology.

Performance is at the heart of musical teaching and learning at Brookfield and all pupils participate in a key stage performance. Pupils also take part in Harvest assemblies, singing assemblies and junior pupils have the opportunity to attend the School Choir practice which for the past six years have taken part in the Young Voices Concert at the Manchester Evening News Arena.  Pupils who are confident are also encouraged to perform in solo performances where parents are invited and welcomed to watch all of these performances whether at school or outside of school.

Impact

Our music curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression and build on and embed current skills. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills in the different musical components and like in other subjects, discreet teaching of vocabulary also forms part of the units of work.

If children are achieving the knowledge and skills in lessons, then they are deemed to be making good or better progress.  We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Pupil discussions and interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
• Governor monitoring with our subject music link governor.
• Moderation staff meetings with opportunities for dialogue between teachers.
• Annual reporting and tracking of standards across the curriculum.
• Photo evidence and images of the pupils practical learning.
• Video analysis through recording of performance in lessons.
• A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes.