Music
Skill ProgressionIntent
At St Gabriel’s, we aim to develop a love and appreciation of music. We want children to enjoy creating and listening to music and to be able to express their views based on their understanding of what agreed good quality music sounds like. The school intends to provide children with an overview of the change and development of music throughout history and to learn about the world’s great musicians. At St Gabriel’s, we wish to provide children with the opportunity to make their own music through learning to play instruments, singing to music and/or using technology to combine sounds.
Implementation
Our curriculum is based on the National Curriculum and is taught using plans and resources produced by Kapow. Music is taught weekly as a discreet lesson. Music is predominantly taught by an experienced, talented Higher Level Teaching Assistant who has a background in musical theatre. In Early Years, music is taught by a class teacher and is enhanced through continuous provision.
Our music curriculum is cyclical meaning children revisit and refine musical skills such as listening, appraising and responding, composing and performing. Children build on their understanding from learning in previous year groups. During their lessons, children will listen and appraise music across different genres and eras in history. Children discuss different elements of music including pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture and structure. Children then have the opportunity to compose their own music in line with the type of music they are studying.
Where possible, units of learning have been integrated with learning in other curriculum areas for example children in year 4 learn about Roman history and combine their understanding of motifs with their music lesson. Each year, all of the children in school apply their musical skills in a performance for parents/carers and the rest of the children in school. Children perform together, with some children performing in solo.
Impact
Assessment for learning strategies are employed to enable teachers to identify the strength of understanding of the children. Teachers will use this information to make adaptations to their planning to meet the needs of the children. Teachers may also change the focus of learning during a lesson to ensure children are supported and challenged. At the end of each unit, teachers will collect evidence of children’s learning. Video/audio recordings are made as well as gathering examples of children’s written composition of music. Teachers keep these to support them to assess children each term School leaders monitor this evidence and hold individual termly meetings with all teachers to ensure they are supported to provide a high-quality Music curriculum. In addition, children’s views and understanding are ascertained through pupil interviews/surveys.