“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.”
Plato
Intent
At West Kirby Primary School, we aim to enable our pupils to be healthy, ecologically aware, global citizens of the future. Music is a part of our daily lives and the ever-changing world around us. By equipping our children to participate in music, we are teaching them valuable life skills. Music promotes good language development, reasoning skills and improves memorization. Performing can improve confidence, resilience and form a foundation for good mental health. Through a progression of skills-based curriculum and encouragement of creativity, we can introduce some of the ways music can help learning, including team working, life skills, behaviour, creativity and pure enjoyment.
Implementation
Music skills are taught by a music specialist. A scheme of work is written for the whole school alongside use of the scheme Charanga. Sing Up is used for learning songs for performances and assemblies. The New Model Music Curriculum is being introduced into whole school planning with a focus on notation. Musical skills are taught both discreetly and through cross-curricular opportunities planned to link to individual year group’s English, Maths, Science and a range of foundation subjects as appropriate. Opportunities are built into the scheme of work to encourage creativity in skills such as composing and improvising. Listening and appraising skills are taught using wide variety of musical styles and genres. Opportunities are built in each term for performance. The inter-related skills of music are incorporated into planning on a weekly basis for repetition of skills.
A typical Music lesson involves:
- Listening and appraising music of different genres and time periods.
- Physical movement such as clapping the pulse, body percussion or dancing in time to music.
- Learning a particular skill – notation, improvising, composing and performing
- Playing both tuned and un-tuned instruments
- Showing good skills for singing – good posture, breathing techniques, articulation and projection of voices.
- Understanding technical vocabulary in music – rhythm, pulse, pitch, tempo
In a music lesson we encourage children to share ideas and be active participants in interactive lessons
Impact
Playing an instrument or learning to sing requires real concentration and helps children to understand their own skills and skills of their friends. In a music lesson children are encouraged to improve skills of co-ordination, maintain good behaviour and work as a team to enjoy music.
How do we know children are enjoying music?
- Showing an enthusiasm and curiosity to improve their learning.
- Verbalising a sense of achievement when overcoming the challenges of learning to read music and play an instrument.
- An eagerness to share their musical skills with others in performance is crucial to their learning.
Music Subject Leader: Mrs Coombes