Music
Intent
At St Wilfrid’s, our broad and balanced music curriculum is ambitious and carefully designed to engage and inspire and give all pupils, with a particular emphasis on those who are disadvantaged or with SEND, the knowledge and skills that they need to take advantage of opportunities, responsibilities and experiences in later life. For example, our Year 5 and 6 curriculum explores music technology, which will broaden children’s opportunities later in life.
It is deliberately planned and sequenced so that the end points that it is building towards are clear and that pupils develop knowledge and skills, directly linking to what has been taught before (through the ‘Power Pyramid’), to be able to reach those end points. The end points are evidenced through carefully tracked outcomes, musical evidence and assessment.
We value the rich purpose of music in our curriculum to enable children to be creative, enjoy active learning, be included and learn the skills of singing, composing and playing music together. Music allows all children to express their thoughts and feelings.
Pupils learn the knowledge that they need to answer subject-specific questions that may include such concepts as pitch, volume, beat, rhythm, composition and are able to practically demonstrate and apply the cyclical skills that they acquire, supported by deliberate exposure to cultural capital opportunities. For example, listening to BBC ten pieces extracts each week in our singing assemblies or through the music we choose to sing in our school choir.
Pupils make good progress due to the expert knowledge of subject leaders and teachers, ensuring that they know and remember more.
Implementation
Early Years, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2
Our pupils will learn that music is a universal language and will be inspired and engaged by music education. Music lesson will engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and develop their talent as musicians, and in turn increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon.
The Charanga scheme of work is used from Year Reception – 6 to ensure a wide exposure to different genres of music, with lots of practical opportunities to explore and develop as musicians and singers. Year 3 have a music teacher from Manchester Education music services that teaches recorders for the year.
Our Nursery children follow a bespoke music curriculum that we have written based on the three initial dimensions of music that are covered in Charanga. We have written this in conjunction with the EYFS 'I Can' curriculum. This curriculum supports our youngest musicians to transition into the Charanga currciulum in Reception with ease as well as meeting their EYFS objectives.
In singing assembly we broaden children's exposeure to the best musical composers from all over the world across History. We use the BBC 10 pieces site to support us with this. Follow this link and have a look at the range on offer.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/ten-pieces
CHOIR
Children can come and join our school choir when they enter KS2, it is open to anybody who wold like to join us. We meet after school every Monday night and as well as developing our musical abilities and skills we have great fun too.
We enjoy performing for the rest of the school as well as for parents and visitors. We cover a range of music from pop, rock, country, songs that celebrate faith, beliefs and morals. songs from musicals as well as singing at celebration events such as Christmas.
Children can request to learn songs in choir as well as in singing assembly, they just need to hand in their reuqest to Mrs Clarke.
MUSICAL MONDAYS
To help us provide a wide and varied experience for our children in music, all classes take part in a 'Musical Monday' experience throughout the year. These are online performances that we can listen to. This year they have ranged from Irish folk, harp players, reggae, hip hop, classical, duo's, solo's, group performances and much more. The children are exposed to a wide range of instruments, styles, countries and cultires through these sessions.
