Music

Aim

At St Joseph's, we believe that our Music curriculum provides every child with opportunities to appreciate and love the art form of music. We hope to inspire our children to develop their talent as musicians across the seven years of their primary career.

Our Music curriculum, drawing on the National Curriculum, is looked at regularly to ensure that it is meeting the needs and interests of our children. We are fortunate to be able to employ a Music specialist teacher to work alongside our class teachers to support the development of every child’s particular talents to the fullness of their potential. We commit significant time within the school timetable, right across the school, to the teaching of Music as we recognise the importance of a truly broad and balanced curriculum.

 

Intent

The National Curriculum for music aims to ensure that all pupils:

• Perform, listen to, review and evaluate music
• Be taught to sing, create and compose music
• Understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated.

 

At St Joseph's, our intention is that children gain a firm understanding of what music is through listening, singing, playing, evaluating, analysing  and composing across a wide variety of historical periods, styles, traditions and musical genres.

We are committed to ensuring all our children, regardless of ability, culture, race or socio-economic background understand the value and importance of music in the wider community, and are able to use their musical skills, knowledge and experiences to involve themselves in music and express themselves in a variety of different contexts. We want all pupils to become musicians who understand that music unites people and communities and can bring great joy and comfort.

 

Implementation

Our music curriculum ensures that students sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate in all year groups. This is embedded in the classroom activities as well as the weekly singing assemblies, various concerts and performances, the learning of instruments and wider musical experiences.

We ensure that music has the same significance given to it as the core subjects as we recognise the importance of children being able to sing, play an instrument, compose and perform. There is a clear progression of skills and vocabulary taught across KS1 and 2, which builds on prior knowledge.

 

The structure of our curriculum is as follows:

• All pupils from EYFS to year 6 are taught the elements of music every week in the classroom lessons so that children are able to use some of the language of music to dissect it, and understand how it is composed, played appreciated and analysed.
• In year 2, children learn to play the Ukulele and in Year 4 children learn to play the recorder. In doing so, they understand how to create notes, as well as how to read basic music notation and play tuned and untuned percussion instruments.
• Composing or performing music using body percussion and vocal sounds is also part of the curriculum, which develops children's understanding of musical elements without the added complexity of an instrument.

 

Impact

By the time children at St. Joseph's leave our school, they should:

• Be able to sing and play instruments as an individual or as part of a group with increasing control and expression.
• Perform in front of an audience with confidence and skill.
• Be able to use musical vocabulary accurately and be able to recognise and interpret musical notation.
• Be able to compare and contrast a range of live/recorded music from different traditions and great composers and musicians whilst expressing their own opinions with increasing confidence.
• Evaluate their own work and that of others.

 

music curriculum overview 2022 2023.pdf