Our music curriculum is, first and foremost, designed 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 to become confident performers, composers, and listeners. Our curriculum introduces children to music from all around the world and across generations, teaching children to be open minded about music: respecting and appreciating the music of all traditions and communities.
Through our implementation of the ‘Kapow’ (https://www.kapowprimary.com/subjects/music/ programme of study, children develop the musical skills of singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, improvising and composing music, and listening and responding to a broad variety of music. Children develop an understanding of the history and cultural context of the music that they listen to and learn how music can be written down. Additionally, children learn the vocabulary of music which, along with the substantive knowledge they learn, enables them to articulate their thinking as ‘musicians’.
Our approach to teaching music also enables children to develop additional skills such as team-working, leadership, creative thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, and presentation and performance skills.
The provision outlined above is supplemented by specialist music teachers from the award-winning Birmingham Education Music Partnership (BEMP), who provide every child in Year Four with weekly music lessons. During these lessons, each pupil learns to play and look after a specific musical instrument, currently clarinet or brass. Furthermore, pupils are able to take these instruments home for additional independent practice throughout Year Four. At the end of Year Four, all of our children have the option to continue learning their instrument through the remainder of Key Stage Two under the guidance of their specialist BEMP teacher.
Beyond the curriculum experienced by all pupils, extra-curricular opportunities are planned to enable children to further their enjoyment of music and performance. Currently, these include joining the choir, performing during assemblies, attending local concerts, and specialist music workshops.
At the end of their time with us, our children are equipped with the musical skills and knowledge that will enable them to access the music curriculum in Key Stage 3 successfully and encourage a life-long appreciation and love of music. Pupils leave us with a heightened sense of the opportunities that music can provide, what it means to be a musician and how the skills that they have developed as musicians can apply to other aspects of their learning.
Mr L.Partridge (Music Subject Lead, Masters Music)
Music
