Music

Intent

At Skelton Primary School, it is our intention to provide all children with a music curriculum that ensures the progression of skills and gives the opportunity to gain a firm understanding of what music is. We achieve this through listening, singing, playing, evaluating, analysing, and composing across a wide variety of styles, traditions, musical genres and historical periods. This provides our children with skills they need to become confident performers, composers and listeners, whilst developing an understanding of the history and cultural context of the music that they listen to and making cross curricular links.

At the heart of our curriculum, we want all children to have the opportunity to play an instrument, to make music with others and to have the chance to progress to the next level of their creative excellence.

Implementation

Throughout their time at Skelton, children have weekly music lessons as part of the whole school curriculum. To aid breath and progression, we have adopted Kapow Primary’s Music, which takes a holistic approach to music by combining the main areas of study.

In Early Years, children experience music through a mixture of teacher led and provision based activities. These include singing songs, dancing and exploring pulse, playing instruments and listening to a range of musical styles. This gives children the opportunity to express their creativity and emotions, as well as reaching a deeper level of musical understanding.

In Key Stage 1, the children learn to use their voices to sing expressively through learning songs and chants linked to their topic. They begin to develop an awareness of the different interrelated dimensions of music through listening to a range of live and recorded music and by exploring and playing tuned and untuned instruments, which includes contributing to group and class compositions.

In Key Stage 2, the children develop their knowledge and understanding of the different interrelated dimensions of music through listening, composing and performing music from other countries, cultures, historical periods and that of renowned composers. Children will also use technology to aid their understanding of music and to record their composition work.

In addition to the weekly music lesson as part of curriculum time, pupils are also given opportunities beyond the National Curriculum to further and support their musical learning. These include regular opportunities to sing in assembly, participate in external events and have workshops with visitors with particular music talents.

Progression in music will be assessed through listening to musical responses and making regular video and audio recordings of their learning.

Impact

Through implementing the above, pupils will leave Skelton Primary School as confident performers, composers and listeners, who are able to express themselves musically at and beyond school. They show an appreciation and respect for a wide range of musical genres and have an understanding of how music is influenced by the wider cultural, social and historical contexts.

To find out more about the Primary National Curriculum for Music, please click here.

Check out our amazing Music activities!