Music

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything”

- Plato

Purpose

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.

Aims

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 interrelated dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.

Intent

At St Michael’s Primary School, we recognise that music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. Through studying music, children can become more resilient, emotionally developed and cope better with anxiety. Moreover, children who practice self-expression and creativity often become better communicators later in life. Our music curriculum is designed to spark children’s interest and ignite a life-long passion and love of music. Throughout their musical journey at St Michael’s, pupils will be guided to perform, listen to, engage with, review and evaluate inspiring works across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians. They will be encouraged to explore, ask questions, make mistakes,  reflect and grow as unique individuals which will enable them to go out from St Michael’s and shine brightly, standing out in their communities as proud, confident, empowered musicians - knowing that anything is possible.

Implementation

St Michael’s Primary School will enable children to learn through a memorable, dynamic and cross-curricular approach linked to termly topics. This thematic approach supports children’s natural curiosity, and through access to instruments and opportunities to explore vocally, children will develop a progression of skills and understanding of the inter-related dimensions of music throughout their time in our school. Projects are intrinsically linked to important artists or movements and aim to give children historical and wider world exposure building their cultural capitol.

At St Michael’s the music curriculum has been carefully mapped out and built to ensure there is progression and repetition so key learning, knowledge and skills are embedded. Our music curriculum develops children’s learning and understanding across 4 key strands. These are:

·         Knowledge & Listening skills

·         Performance skills   

·         Composition Skills

·         Personal Development Skills

In the Foundation Stage, music comes under the learning area of ‘Expressive Arts and Design’. As children explore music, they make discoveries about themselves and the world around them, supporting intellectual, social-emotional, motor, language, and overall literacy development. Therefore, our curriculum is designed to stimulate young children’s creativity and will enabled them to build a preliminary understanding of music through sound-making, singing and recognising simple rhythms through clapping and moving.

During Key Stage 1, pupils will continue to develop their use of voice and begin to use instruments expressively and musically in order to experiment with creating and combining sounds using the dimensions of music (e.g. pitch, dynamics). Children will also have the opportunities to listen to music with concentration to develop an understanding and appreciation for this highly diverse and creative art form. Using these skills, children will begin to improvise and compose their own music.

During Key Stage 2, pupils will continue to develop these skills with a higher degree of accuracy and confidence.

Here at St Michael’s, all children are encouraged to pursue their passions and talents in music. We provide the opportunity for children to work with a range of visiting music teachers for individual instrumental lessons and have visiting artists perform and run workshops. We also organise trips and whole school musical events; have weekly singing assemblies; have termly services in which the whole school perform for family and friends, and year group productions such as the Nativity and Y6 musical.

Impact

Through our curriculum, which inspires, engages and incorporates a wide range of musical genres, the pupils at St Michael’s will develop an understanding of and appreciation for this diverse art form.  Our curriculum is designed to offer increasing challenge to all pupils as they move up through the school, so they can build up a deep knowledge and a mastery of the skills needed to develop into confident musicians.

By the end of their primary educations, pupils from St Michael’s should:

• be able 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

• listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory

• have learnt to use their voices and play musical instruments, to play, perform and compose music on their own and with others with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression

• use and understand staff and other musical notations

• have had the opportunity to use technology appropriately and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence

• understand how music is created, produced and communicated, including a understanding of and the opportunity to explore the inter-related dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations

Assessment

At St Michael’s we appreciate that music does not follow a linear learning path, therefore, pupil’s progress is assessed informally throughout the year. Opportunities to celebrate progress may include making observations of children’s work, recording video clips and audio tracks to allow pupils to evaluate their own work, and performing finished pieces of work to audiences.