Music Curriculum Overview
Intent
Music at Meadowside is an essential part of children’s learning, which embodies a high form of creativity in addition to being a universal language
The intent of our Meadowside Music Curriculum is to give our children:
- The opportunities to inspire creativity, curiosity and self-expression
- The encouragement to develop a passion for their individual musical journeys.
- The knowledge of some key influential composers across a variety of historical periods
- The appreciation of a diverse range of musical genres
- The skills to finding their voice as singers and performers and as composers
- The confidence to explore and reflect upon music independently and beyond Meadowside.
- The ability to evaluate their own sense of achievement
For each subject, we use an aspirational Golden Thread statement that is important to our school vision and values at Meadowside. We have considered how each subject can help the children in their journey to secondary school and beyond.
Our Meadowside Golden Thread for Music is:
To help children develop a lifelong love of music.
Music Coverage across year groups and topics
Implementation
At Meadowside Primary School, we teach music through our topics. Each year group uses different topics to tie together our curriculum subjects in a meaningful way. Music skills- based on the requirements of the National Curriculum- are taught sequentially, progressively getting more difficult as children move through the year groups.
A comprehensive progression of skills assists teachers planning in line with the National Curriculum alongside our Musical Moments scheme of work and resources. This ensures all children gain a solid understanding of musical skills through quality first teaching.
In year 4, all children will be given the opportunity to be taught a tuned instrument (glockenspiels) for the whole of the summer term as part of our Whole Class Ensemble Tuition (WCET).
All children are given the opportunity to have additional music lessons, taught by the peripatetic music teachers, if they wish to learn them (awaiting confirmation for this academic year as to which instruments).
We build upon learning from previous years. As children develop in their understanding and skills, they become more confident in composing their own pieces of music, using their own choice of instruments, using musical notation to record their compositions and performing their compositions to various audiences.
Musical skills are embedded into lessons to ensure key vocabulary and skills are being developed and new vocabulary is being introduced through direct teaching.
Whilst at Meadowside Primary School, children have access to a variety of musical experiences, which allows the children to discover areas of strength. Music will develop an understanding of culture and history as well as allowing children to be able to: sing and feel a pulse, dissect music and comprehend its parts, compose music and perform through various opportunities ( eg school productions, carol concerts, shine events and assemblies)
Children are able to enjoy music in many different ways: as a listener, composer and performer.
Tasks and activities are designed to allow children to engage at their own level though setting open-ended tasks, incorporating a gradual increase in difficulty of tasks and considering different abilities when grouping. We recognise Music is a universal language and an inclusive subject where each child has the opportunity to thrive.
Teachers demonstrate how to use musical instruments in order to develop the children’s musical skills.
There will be chances for children to perform to greater audiences through wider opportunities such as: Young Voices (y4-6), singing in the local community, collaborative events (Phillamusica) being part of the school choir, Cheltenham Jazz festival. This will in turn increases the children’s musical skills and abilities.
Weekly singing assemblies will take place to allow children to develop their singing and performance skills with the sense of community that this offers.
Impact
The children are assessed throughout the year by their class teacher, based on the work being produced in class. A mixture of knowledge and skills will be assessed regularly. Three times a year, the music subject leader will hold a pupil voice session to moderate the assessment judgements made by the class teacher. This gives our subject leader the chance to see strengths and areas for development in the teaching and learning of music at Meadowside.
This successful implementation at Meadowside, results in a fun and engaging music education. By the end of year 6, children retain knowledge that is pertinent to music, in addition to participating in wider musical opportunities.
Music at Meadowside creates a rich palette from which children access fundamental skills such as: achievement, self-confidence, interaction with an awareness of others and self-reflection which will carry them into KS3 with hopefully a life-long love of music; (whether that be to want to further their skills as a musician or indeed live a fulfilled life appreciating simply listening to music as a backing track throughout their lives)
Making a difference for our future.
Key Documents
National Curriculum in England: Art Programme of Study
Music Knowledge and Skills Progression (document to be added)
Music Overview (document to be added)
SEND in Music (document to be added)
How can I support my child with music?
The joy of music is that it can be created and enjoyed by anyone, almost anywhere. Give your child the opportunities and encouragement that will allow them to be musicians and indeed appreciate music wherever they go. Seek opportunities for discussion when you hear a piece of music or when they sing a song.
- Encourage listening skills
Getting children to explore music and describe what they hear is a useful way to help them grow their listening skills.
Pick a piece of music to play and while listening to it ask children some simple questions about what they hear e.g.
- How could you describe this music?
- What sounds can you hear in this music?
- How does this music make you feel?
- What does this music make you think of?
Listening and describing in this way can really help a child’s communication development.
- Play along to music
All children love to make a noise and playing instruments along to a song is a great way of experiencing and exploring dynamics -the volume of sound of a piece of music.
Invite your child to play as quietly or loudly as they can with different sound makers or body percussion, e.g. how loudly can we clap our hands, how quietly can we tap a pan with a spoon?
Playing along is also a great way to discover the pulse of a song – essentially the heartbeat of the music, also referred to as a steady beat.
Typically the pulse is what people tap their foot to or dance along to when listening to music.
Using a sleeping puppet, invite your child to wake it up by playing loudly and when it goes to sleep to play quietly.
Using a pop-up puppet, you can gradually move the puppet up and down and ask your child to play gradually louder and gradually quieter.
This also works with an umbrella, gradually opening and closing it.
- Explore the different instruments that make up a song
Try playing games and activities as a way of identifying how a variety of instruments combine to make a piece of music
Watch this performance by the BBC Philharmonic orchestra of I am a Robot.
Different instruments in the orchestra have different roles in the music.
Listen out for the sounds of families of instruments and the role they have in the music.
Instrument families from the orchestra are:
- Brass – instruments such as trumpets, trombones, tuba
- Strings – instruments such as cello, violin, viola
- Percussion – instruments such as drum kit, cymbals, xylophone
- Woodwind – instruments such as flute, clarinet and saxophone
- Keyboard – instruments such as piano, keyboard, organ
The different instrument families taking part in I am a Robot can be spotted by the different colour shirts the musicians are wearing.
You can play games to explore this with children, whilst listening you could stand up when you hear a brass sound, parents could represent the brass section whilst the children could, for example, represent the string section and stand when the strings play.
This is a great way to encourage active listening.
To breakdown the different instruments used in songs and create your own sounds try the Play It! interactive music tool.
- Make your own sounds
A great way of exploring music is to experiment with sounds that can be created with mouths.
Why not think about:
- What sounds can we make with our lips?
- What sounds can we make with our tongues?
- What sounds can we make with our teeth?
Try encouraging children to describe the sounds they make. By doing this you will be exploring different sounds and encouraging active listening.
Playing with mouth sounds is a physical exercise which supports children’s muscles in their mouths, which in turn helps their speech development.
Explore the kitchen – pots and pans are always useful to encourage the exploration of sounds e.g. tapping a pan with a spoon creates a different sound when you tap or ‘swish’ a pan with your hand.
Experiment with how many different sounds can be found by playing with kitchen utensils or things you can find outside, e.g. leaves and twigs.
- Get moving to music
Tempo refers to the speed in music and a great way for children to explore this is physically.
Invite your child to move whilst listening to music and watch how they respond, then follow and copy their ideas.
Copying their physical ideas will show them you value their ideas.
Some children may find physically expressing their response to music much more natural than talking about or playing instruments with the music.
Try experimenting with a wide range of genres of music and watch how your child responds.
Experimenting with music with a range of tempo can be really good fun.
Zorba the Greek is a great example to try out as the tempo in the music gradually increases.
Listening to music from around the world, from a range of cultures will offer children rich listening experiences.
