Music

Music Narrative

Excellent music education opens opportunities and gives children and young people an opportunity to express themselves, to explore their creativity, to work hard at something, persevere and shine. These experiences and achievements stay with them and shape their lives. We aim to enable our children to learn about and understand the musical world that they live in so that they can enjoy music and appreciate musical experiences and the diversity of the different genres around the world. It is important that we enable all children to perform, listen to, review and evaluate music. In addition, we value the opportunities to sing, create and compose music. 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. We aim to help them appreciate and respect the music in local and wider communities and the importance it plays.

The curriculum has been intentionally designed to ensure children develop disciplinary knowledge through performance, composition, appreciation and understanding of the history of music.

The following high-dividend concepts have been identified as part of the NPAT music curriculum: rhythm, pulse, pitch, tempo, dynamics, timbre, metre and structure. These will form the ‘inter-related dimensions of music’ through which performing, composing, appreciation and understanding of music will be taught. Teachers will make explicit reference to where children have met these concepts before in the curriculum.

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. (National Curriculum 2014)

We follow the Charanga Music Scheme which is a progressive programme to enable the children to develop their understanding, make musical judgements, apply their new learning, develop their aural memory, express themselves physically, emotionally and through discussion and create their own musical ideas. The wide range of core resources have been developed specifically to motivate and capture each individual’s personal interest.

The children not only learn about music; they become musicians who are able to share and perform using their new skills.

Units of Work are divided into 6 steps with activities and games which cover the musical dimensions, through singing and playing instruments, listening and creating music – all intrinsically linked through a central song or piece.

Charanga Musical School Units of Work enable children to understand musical concepts through a repetition-based approach to learning. Learning about the same musical concept through different musical activities enables a more secure, deeper learning and mastery of musical skills.

As a junior school, during Lower KS2, the children will draw upon their musical knowledge from the expressive elements of EYFS and their time in their KS1 settings. Using retrieval practice and with reference to the National Curriculum, children will build upon their knowledge of the inter-related dimensions of music and continue to develop their skills in composing and performing.

Throughout KS2, with reference to the National Curriculum, children will be taught to sing and play musically with increasing confidence and control. They should develop an understanding of musical composition, organising and manipulating ideas within musical structures and reproducing sounds from aural memory. Children will be taught to: play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and playing musical instruments with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression; improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the inter-related dimensions of music; listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory; use and understand staff and other musical notations; appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians and develop an understanding of the history of music.

Horizontal links will be made by revisiting the inter-related dimensions of music in each termly unit. All units begin with listening and appraising, moving to singing and improvising to the song, finishing with composing and performing.

Vertical links will be made in planning where knowledge and understanding are built upon from previous music units.

Diagonal links will be made in planning, particularly where this is cross-curricular e.g., links to History and PSHE e.g., the song ‘Blackbird’ in Year Four and ‘Dancing in the Street’ in Year Five both link to the American civil rights movement in the 1960s. In Year Five, children study Egypt within their cross curricular learning, and learn to play the Samba drums within their Music lessons.

The NPAT curriculum reflects our school ethos and groups of people that are representative of our school and society. At Park, we engage with music in our local community with regular opportunities for children to perform music within school and also within the local community such as singing at the Seasonal Concert which takes place annually with other local schools at the Castle Theatre.

The NPAT curriculum and pedagogy will therefore enable children to begin secondary school with well-developed listening, composing and performing skills. They will be able to draw on their knowledge of the high dividend concepts and will be able to use appropriate musical terms.

We follow the fantastic, interactive Charanga scheme of work where the children are taught the vital parts of music including melodies, pitch, harmony, music appreciation, music history and much more!

Using Charanga, children can listen and appraise popular and classical music, learn how to play and improvise and most importantly, perform! This is done through exciting units with names such as such as 'Mamma Mia', 'I wanna play in a band and 'Fresh Prince of Bel Air!'

The children also have opportunities in the classroom music lessons to learn to play the recorder, glockenspiels and percussion instruments.

As well as our usual classroom based music lessons in which our children can enjoy our vast range of instruments, we have a weekly whole school 'Singing together' assembly led by Mrs Young. The children have the opportunity to perform their singing and play their instruments in productions and celebrations throughout the year. We love to hear live music being played and learning about the different groups of instruments, benefiting from visiting musicians during the year. Children have the opportunity to learn an instrument from visiting specialist music teachers who teach the Guitar and Keyboard. Our children are encouraged to develop an interest in music and we have Monthly music themes for our assemblies focused around a 'Musician of the Month'.
 

We have a very active school choir who have performed for numerous events. We take place in the Seasonal Concert organised by the Rotary Club of Wellingborough at The Castle Theatre which is always a yearly highlight. We also regularly sing at Wellingborough library and for community events. We have established links with a local care home, Lancum House, and the children are regularly invited to perform for the residents.