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
The ‘Being Imaginative and Expressive’ Early Learning Goal from EYFS aims for children to:
- Sing a range of well-known nursery rhymes and songs
- Perform songs, rhymes, poems and stories with others, and – when appropriate try to move in time with music.
At Emmbrook Infant School, we are committed to delivering an inspiring and engaging music curriculum. We give children many opportunities to listen, perform, experiment with and compose music and integrate these key skills into our music lessons. Children learn about the elements that make up music and learn key musical vocabulary. We enrich the music curriculum with opportunities to sing, learn instruments, listen to a wide range of music, become familiar with some of the works of the great composers, perform to their peers, experience instruments from around the world and be inspired by high-quality live performances. In Foundation Stage the children learn many songs all year round and are able to perform them to their peers. They experiment with musical instruments and play them with increasing accuracy.
Implementation
Our music lessons, mostly taken from Music Express, are weekly and focus on some key elements of music: pitch, tempo, dynamics and duration.
These are taught and explored through the skills outlined in the national curriculum of listening, performing and composing.
Our spiral based curriculum ‘spirals’ around these elements, giving the children a clear focus to their music lessons. The focuses are repeated within and across the year groups, giving children the opportunity to revisit previous learning, make links and progress in their understanding.
- The key skills of listening, performing and composing are also encouraged in the children’s everyday life at school. The overarching topics taught by each year group has a bank of songs and poems to go with it to allow children to be singing in their classrooms throughout the day.
- The weekly singing assembly and offer of choir club also promotes a love for singing. Children have the opportunity to learn an instrument through iRock and the yearly talent show and class performances throughout the year gives all children a chance to perform and celebrate their musical skills.
- The opportunity to listen to the best in the musical canon is given at assembly and snack times, however specific teaching time is also given to critical listening. We provide children with the opportunity to listen to live music through concerts performed by the local senior school and musical workshops. This also gives the children a chance to listen to a wider range of instruments that they are not used to seeing in school.
- All our students are able to participate and enjoy music at their individual levels and abilities. Each skill requires something a little different and is able to appeal to different strengths of the learners.
- All our students are able to participate and enjoy music at their individual levels and abilities. Each skill requires something a little different and is able to appeal to different strengths of the learners.
- Musical genres and musicians?
Impact
The balance of specific teaching of the elements of music, the variety of skills practised and explored and the enrichment opportunities provided in our music curriculum enables our students to find the way in which they best enjoy and appreciate music.
Our music curriculum supports and reflects our core values policy through the way in which children are required to use teamwork, patience, confidence, independence, resilience and respect when working in groups, performing, learning a new skill and appraising their own and others’ work.
They will leave KS1 with a clear understanding of some of the elements that make up music and be able to demonstrate their understanding of them through singing, performing, composing and listening critically. They will have a solid foundation on which to learn more and to develop their skills.