‘Where words fail, music speaks’

Hans Christian Andersen

Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. We provide opportunities for all children to create, play, perform and enjoy music, to develop the skills to appreciate a wide variety of musical forms, and to begin to make judgements about the quality of music.  

The aims of music teaching are to enable all children to:  

• perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres,  styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians  
• learn to sing and use their voices  
• have the opportunity to learn to play a musical instrument  
• use technology appropriately to create and compose music on their own and with others 
• understand and explore how music is created

We aim to make music an enjoyable learning experience and encourage children to participate in a variety of musical activities. We provide opportunities for all children to sing and to listen to and appreciate different styles and genres of music. We teach them the skills of recognising and commenting on pulse, pitch, rhythm, timbre, dynamics and texture in music. We provide opportunities for children to work with others to make music and show how individuals compose and organise music. We also begin to teach them some of the features of musical notation and to develop an understanding of the history of music.  All children explore learning and performing a musical instrument in curriculum lessons via recorders in LKS2 and ukulele in UKS2. Children progress onto all more formal instrumental lessons if they wish (brass, string, percussion, woodwind, piano and vocal).

Curriculum progression:

The majority of Music is taught discretely using the Charanga Musical School programme and is delivered by a music specialist teacher.  The Charanga scheme demonstrates clear progression and weaves interrelated dimensions of music through the units to encourage the development of musical skills as the learning progresses through listening and appraising, differing musical activities (including creating and exploring) and performing.  

Each unit of work comprises of strands of musical learning which correspond with the national curriculum for music:

• Listening and Appraising
• Singing
• Playing instruments
• Improvisation
• Composition
• Performing

Additional music teaching:

Children are offered the opportunity to learn to play an instrument with peripatetic music teachers who offer tuition in piano, guitar and drums. Children in KS2 are also taught the recorder and ukulele where they learn to play a variety of pieces as a whole class.  

Music curriculum planning:

In addition to the Charanga scheme, music is also taught and used across the curriculum as an enhancement within projects.  To ensure progression, procedural knowledge is mapped across school and a wide range of resources are available to support music teaching.  

Early years foundation stage:

Within our EYFS setting, the children are taught music through planning in the moment and loose parts play. We encourage the children to play and select what they do themselves, as we believe this enables them to become deeply engaged in that activity. The adults observe and wait for an opportunity where they feel they can make a difference. They then interact to teach the next step appropriate for that unique child at that precise moment. Each time they interact they are observing, assessing and planning for and responding to that individual child. Opportunities to teach music are grasped as and when they arise using the resources as appropriate from the learning environment.

Assessment and recording:  

Children’s learning in music is assessed formatively by observing and making informal judgements throughout units of work. Additional evidence may be gained during school performances or other relevant events, and may be presented in the form of recordings or photographs.