Intent
At Great Corby School and Nursery, we encourage each individual child to become a successful life-long learner by igniting their curiosity, developing their love for learning and instilling a desire to achieve.
Our Music curriculum intends to help children to feel that they are musical, and to develop a life-long love of music. We focus on developing the skills, knowledge and understanding that children need in order to become confident performers, composers, and listeners. Our curriculum introduces children to music from all around the world and across generations, teaching children to respect and appreciate the music of all traditions and communities.
Children will develop the musical skills of singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, improvising and composing music, and listening and responding to music. They will develop an understanding of the history and cultural context of the music that they listen to and learn how music can be written down.
Through music, our curriculum helps children develop transferable skills such as team-working, leadership, creative thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, and presentation and performance skills. These skills are vital to children’s development as learners and have a wider application in their general lives outside and beyond school.
Implementation
At Great Corby School and Nursery, we are great advocates of the creative arts and set dedicated weekly teaching of music to all pupils in our school. We have adopted the Kapow Primary Music scheme which takes a holistic approach to music, in which the individual strands below are woven together to create engaging and enriching learning experiences:
- Performing
- Listening
- Composing
- The history of music
- The inter-related dimensions of music
These strands are taught cross-curricular as a topic designed to capture pupils’ imagination and encourage them to explore music enthusiastically. Over the course of the scheme, children will be taught how to sing fluently and expressively both in class and with Mr. King during whole school singing assemblies and choir each week. Children are given opportunities to perform as individuals, in groups to parents and out in our community.
Children will learn to recognise and name the interrelated dimensions of music – pitch, duration, tempo, timbre, structure, texture and dynamics – and use these expressively in their own improvisations and compositions.
Music develops early in the Early Years with singing along to the piano sessions and creating curiosity and an enjoyment of music. This leads throughout Key Stage 1 & 2 as children will learn to play tuned and untuned instruments accurately and with control.
Great Corby School and Nursery have adopted the recommendation in the Model Music Curriculum that children are given the opportunity to learn a tuned instrument for a minimum of one term. Again, the children will have opportunities to perform in school and the wider community.
The teaching of Music is developed using a spiral curriculum model where previous skills and knowledge are returned to and built upon. Children progress in terms of tackling more complex tasks and doing the more simple tasks better, as well as developing understanding and knowledge of the history of music, staff and other musical notations, as well as the interrelated dimensions of music and more.
In each lesson, pupils will actively participate in musical activities drawn from a range of styles and traditions, developing their musical skills and their understanding of how music works. Lessons incorporate a range of teaching strategies from independent tasks, paired and group work as well as improvisation and teacher-led performances. Lessons are ‘hands-on’ and incorporate movement and dance elements, as well as making cross curricular links with other areas of learning.
Knowledge organisers for each unit support pupils in building a foundation of factual knowledge by encouraging recall of key facts and vocabulary.
Strong subject knowledge is vital for staff to be able to deliver a highly effective and robust music curriculum. Each unit of lessons includes multiple teacher videos to develop subject knowledge and support ongoing CPD, aiding teachers in their own acquisition of musical skills and knowledge. Further CPD opportunities can also be found via webinars with our music subject specialists.
Impact
The impact of our Music scheme can be constantly monitored through both formative and summative assessment opportunities. At the end of many units is often a performance element where teachers can make a summative assessment of pupils’ learning. Knowledge organisers for each unit support pupils by providing a highly visual record of the key learning from the unit, encouraging recall of practical skills, key knowledge and vocabulary.
The expected impact of following the Kapow Primary Music scheme of work is that children will:
- Be confident performers, composers and listeners and will be able to express themselves musically at and beyond school.
- Show an appreciation and respect for a wide range of musical styles from around the world and will understand how music is influenced by the wider cultural, social, and historical contexts in which it is developed.
- Understand the ways in which music can be written down to support performing and composing activities.
- Demonstrate and articulate an enthusiasm for music and be able to identify their own personal musical preferences.
- Meet the end of key stage expectations outlined in the national curriculum for Music.
After the implementation of our music curriculum, pupils should leave primary school equipped with a range of skills to enable them to succeed in their secondary education and to be able to enjoy and appreciate music throughout their lives.
