Intent

Our aim is to help children to feel that they are musical, and to develop a life-long love of music. We focus on developing the skills, knowledge and understanding that children need in order to become confident performers, composers, and listeners. Our curriculum introduces children to music from all around the world and across generations, teaching children to respect and appreciate the music of all traditions and communities.

Through music, our curriculum helps children develop transferable skills such as team-working, leadership, creative thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, and presentation and performance skills. These skills are vital to children’s development as learners and have a wider application in their general lives outside and beyond school.

Implementation

Music is taught weekly throughout the school by class teachers / HLTAs, and children also participate in a weekly whole-school singing worship led by the subject leader.

We follow the condensed version of Kapow Primary’s Music scheme for our curriculum music lessons. This scheme takes a holistic approach to music. Each unit is focussed on an engaging theme, and weaves together the individual strands:

● Listening and evaluating

● Creating sound

● Notation

● Improvising and composing

● Performing

Over the course of the scheme, children are taught how to sing fluently and expressively, and play tuned and untuned instruments accurately and with control. They learn to recognise, demonstrate and name the interrelated dimensions of music - pitch, duration, tempo, timbre, structure, texture and dynamics - and use these expressively in their own improvisations and compositions.

The Kapow Primary scheme follows the spiral curriculum model where previous skills and knowledge are returned to and built upon. Children progress in terms of tackling more complex tasks and doing more simple tasks better, as well as developing understanding and knowledge of the history of music, staff, and other musical notations, the interrelated dimensions of music and more.

We supplement this scheme with additional units designed to provide performance opportunities for our children.  Each year, our year 4 children benefit from whole-class instrumental tuition taught by a specialist instrumental teacher, ending with a performance to parents / carers. EYFS and KS1 perform a musical nativity play each year and Years 5 and 6 perform an end of year musical. 

At Frenchay we value live music, and seek to provide regular opportunities for children to listen to live performances of music from different genres and traditions.

All children within KS2 are invited to join our school choir, which rehearses weekly after school. This provides the opportunity for children to sing wide-ranging choral repertoire, including part singing, and work towards performance opportunities both in school and within our wider

Impact

Our musicians are equipped with a range of skills to enable them to succeed in their secondary education and to be able to enjoy and appreciate music throughout their lives. We expect that children will:

✓ Be confident performers, composers and listeners and will be able to express themselves musically at and beyond school.

✓ Show an appreciation and respect for a wide range of musical styles from around the world and will understand how music is influenced by the wider cultural, social, and historical contexts in which it is developed.

✓ Understand the various ways in which music can be written down to support performing and composing activities.

✓ Demonstrate and articulate an enthusiasm for music and be able to identify their own personal musical preferences.