Intent
Our Vision
Music throughout school embodies the “St Peter’s and Clifton School Spirit” in a positive and meaningful way.
- Service – The community of parents, grandparents and carers are invited to join our church services at Harvest, Easter and Christmas. Year 4 sing carols to people in a residential home.
- Perseverance – We never give up! We rehearse for Young Voices, Church services, music concerts and Music for Youth events. Children work hard in lessons to be accurate in singing and playing various musical instruments.
- Inquisitive – Children find out about different instruments, notation, composers and sing a varied repertoire of songs.
- Respectful – We respect each other in all the music we do, helping one another to be the best we can be.
- Inspirational – We are inspired by musicians and composers from the past and present.
- Trust – We trust each other in all the music we do.
Performing, taking part in musical activities; listening to and creating music; makes our school a happy place to be. In all the music work we are given, we do the best that we can do.
Through teaching and delivering a high quality music education, our school engages and inspires pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. We want children to enjoy singing and playing instruments which are central to our music. Through Christmas productions, the units of work from Charanga and Ten pieces, the children develop their understanding, make musical judgements, apply their new learning, develop their aural memory, express themselves physically, emotionally and through discussion and create their own musical ideas. We aim to motivate and capture each child’s personal interest and develop their musical knowledge and confidence.
The aims of the National Curriculum for music are to ensure that all pupils:
- 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, to create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence
- Understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the inter-related dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.
Implementation
At St Peter’s and Clifton Primary School we make music an enjoyable learning experience. We encourage children to participate in a variety of musical experiences through which we aim to build up the confidence of all children. Singing lies at the heart of good music teaching. Our teaching focuses on developing the children’s ability to sing in tune and with other people. Through singing songs, children learn about the structure and organisation of music.
We teach them to listen and to appreciate different forms of music. As children get older, we expect them to maintain their concentration for longer and to listen to more extended pieces of music. Children develop descriptive skills in music lessons when learning about how music can represent feelings and emotions. We teach them the disciplined skills of recognising pulse and pitch. We often teach these together. We also teach children how to work with others to make music and how individuals combine together to make sounds. We also begin to teach them musical notation and how to compose music in different ways.
We recognise that there are children of widely different musical abilities in all classes, so we provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child. We achieve this in a variety of ways by:
- setting common tasks which are open-ended and can have a variety of responses;
- setting tasks of increasing difficulty (not all children complete all tasks);
- grouping children by ability in the room and setting different tasks to each ability group;
- providing resources of different complexity depending on the ability of the child;
- using classroom assistants to support the work of individuals or groups of children
Impact
Our music planning is geared to three aspects of progress:
- increasing breadth and range of musical experience
- increasing challenge and difficulty in musical activities;
- increasing confidence, sensitivity and creativity in the children’s music making.