Music
Music is life itself. What would this world be without good music? No matter what kind it is.
Louis Armstrong American Trumpeter and Vocalist
An introduction from the Music Lead - Mrs Harris
Music
Intent:
At Longlands Primary School we endeavour to make music an enjoyable learning experience.
We encourage all children to participate in a variety of musical experiences through which we aim to build up their love of music, self-confidence and sense of achievement.
Our teaching focusses on developing children’s ability to sing in tune and with other people, play tuned and untuned musical instruments with increasing control, fluency and expression, and listen critically to a wide range of music from different periods, genres, styles and traditions.
As children progress through school, we hope that they will increasingly understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated through the interrelated dimensions of music: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and musical notation. By Key stage 2, we want children to begin to improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the interrelated dimensions of music.
Implementation:
We teach music in Reception classes as an integral part of the topic covered during the year. In the Early Years, music contributes to a child’s development in the area of Expressive Arts and Design. Key stage 1 and 2 children are taught music by their class teacher on a half termly basis through chosen songs that are linked to the Power of Reading text for that half-term.
We use Sing Up (an online resource) to support our music teaching as it is a very clear and comprehensive scheme of work which covers all the national curriculum requirements in a full and progressive way. Instrumental learning is taught explicitly and progressively using the Sing Up units of work. However, we do not follow the scheme strictly as we prefer to link our music teaching to what is being taught across the curriculum. Resources from the scheme are chosen specifically to support the topic work.
Across the school, we choose pieces of music from Sing Up to encourage active listening to music from different genres and eras on a weekly basis.
Children throughout the school sing on a weekly basis in assemblies.
We encourage children to be a part of Rock Steady, which means they can be part of a rock band; learn to play a guitar, the drums, keyboard or sing. Every term they will perform for the parents.
There is a school choir club where children meet weekly to practise and sing songs. The choir perform at the O2 as part of Young Voices.
Each week, children take part in singing assemblies. Children learn songs, musical notations as well as some musical language, linked to our Sing Up program.
We have a recorder club which meets and practises each week.
Children have opportunities to take part in piano or guitar lessons.
At our school we teach music to all children, whatever their ability. Music forms part of the school curriculum policy to provide a broad and balanced education for all children. In order to support those children with SEN we look at a range of factors, including classroom organisation, teaching materials, teaching style, and differentiation, so that we can take some additional or different action to enable the child to learn more effectively. This ensures that our teaching is matched to the child’s needs.
Impact
Teachers assess children’s work in music by making informal judgements as they observe them during lessons. We record the children singing their new song at the beginning of each half-term and then again at the end to show their progress. Additional evidence may be gained during school performances or other relevant events, and may be presented in the form of recordings or photographs. The attainment of each child is indicated annually in the end of year report.