Pupils should develop musical skills which may be expressed instrumentally, vocally or through music technology. Every child should be able to experience music and to make progress. They should understand basic subject-specific vocabulary relating to singing, composing, listening and performing and begin to use their musical skills.
Pupils should be taught to:
- Use their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes
- Play tuned and untuned instruments musically
- Listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music
- Experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the inter-related dimensions of music
Intent
The National Curriculum for music aims to ensure that all children:
- 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 Winterbourne Nursery and Infant School, 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 developing a curiosity for the subject, as well as an understanding and acceptance of the validity and importance of all types of music, and an unbiased respect for the role that music may wish to be expressed in any person’s life. We are committed to ensuring children 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, in a variety of different contexts.
Implementation
Music is taught throughout the school, establishing cross curricular links to include English, Foundation subjects including History and Geography, Maths, Science, R.E., Expressive art & design in Early Years. As well as music lessons, regular music assemblies take place for key stage 1 classes.
In the Foundation Stage music is taught through singing nursery rhymes which help our young learners who are at an early stage of learning English. Singing rhymes is important because they improve language, cognitive, physical and social development. Children develop mouth and tongue muscles by speaking the rhymes and increase memory and recall skills. Hearing nursery rhymes helps children learn how sounds are put together to make words and sentences, and children begin to understand the rhythm and inflection of language.
Children in KS1 have the opportunity to learn an instrument such as the ukulele where they will begin to read music. There are opportunities for children to perform to invited audiences such as Christmas concerts, year group assemblies and the Year 2 End of Year Production.
KS1 use Croydon music specialists. They provide a programme of study which has been written to provide broad coverage of the music curriculum. Pupils have opportunities to play instruments, compose, perform and listen to music from a range of styles, times and cultures. Many staff link songs to their topics as a way of using songs to teach lessons or encourage their children to sing for pleasure.
Children develop an understanding of culture and history, both in relation to children individually, as well as ethnicities from across the world. They learn to sing a variety of songs, rhymes and chants from various times and countries and to use their voices expressively. They have the opportunity to play tuned and un-tuned instruments with increasing control and rehearse and perform with others, with an awareness of audience. They learn Performing skills, Composing skills, Appraising skills, and Improvisation skills. They listen to music from around the world and develop the language to explain what they have heard, how it made them feel and whether or not they liked or disliked the music they heard and explain why.
Impact
Teachers assess children’s work in music by making informal judgements as they observe them during lessons. Discussion with teachers and music specialists over half termly overview meetings