Avening Primary School

Music

Our Curriculum Intent for Music

Click here for our Music Policy 2024

 At Avening Primary School, we believe that music enriches the lives of people. Music is a unique way of communicating that can inspire creativity, personal development and motivation. It is a vehicle for personal expression and plays an important part in helping children feel part of a community. Music is an important entitlement to all children at Avening Primary School. 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.

 “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.” Plato

                               

‘Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. A high quality music education should engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so 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.’(National Curriculum in England, September 2013)

 Our overarching aim for Music is to promote a high level of understanding of skills and knowledge.   

 In line with the National Curriculum, we aim to ensure that all children:

  •  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 to use their voices, to create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, use technology appropriately and 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.

   

The Music curriculum at Avening Primary School is built around the statutory content of the 2014 National Curriculum and the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum. Music is a foundation subject; the National Curriculum programmes of study require children to be taught to sing and play musically with increasing confidence and control. By the end of Key Stage 2, they should have the opportunity to develop an understanding of musical composition, organising and manipulating ideas within musical structures and reproducing sounds from aural memory.

At our school, there is a carefully planned scheme of work which develops all aspects of the music curriculum, informed by the Model Music Curriculum. We use the Charanga music scheme as our starting point which provides progression, breadth and balance. This involves singing, composition and performing in all phases. In Key Stage 1, children are introduced to formal notation and learn to play tuned instruments. These skills are developed in Key Stage 2 and whole class woodwind tuition with peripatetic specialists is offered to all children in Years 5 and 6.

Music is taught weekly, with classes having approximately 1 hour or music each week from Year 1. In EYFS, music is a regular feature of the school day, with singing, rhymes and lessons each week. 

An overview of knowledge and skills taught is below:

There are fewer music lessons from Charanga during term 2. This is because the children are preparing for their Christmas productions which are always musical with lots of singing!