Music
Music is a powerful, unique form of communication that can change the way pupils feel, think and act. It allows opportunity for expression and plays an important part in the personal development of an individual. As a school, we aspire to live out God’s plan for all to flourish and believe in providing our children with varied opportunities to develop the gifts and talents they have been blessed with and to ensure they embrace “Life in its Fullness” (John 10:10). At Ettington C of E Primary School we make music an enjoyable learning experience. We encourage all children to participate in a variety of musical experiences, carefully weaved through our Creative Curriculum, through which we aim to build up their love of music, self-confidence and sense of achievement.
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, 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, children will begin to improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the interrelated dimensions of music.
We teach music in Reception classes as an integral part of the topic work 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 Mrs Kemp (our school music specialist teacher) weekly, with lessons organised largely in 3 half-term blocks, although some aspects of music learning are ongoing throughout the year.
We use Charanga (an on-line resource) to support our weekly music teaching as it is a clear and comprehensive scheme of work which covers all the national curriculum requirements in a full and progressive way. Instrumental learning, including playing the glockenspiel and percussion instruments, is taught explicitly and progressively using the charanga units of work. We also supplement Charanga by using other quality online resources such as ‘Ten Pieces’, ‘Out of the Ark’ and ‘Sing up’ to support both whole school singing and appraising and termly productions.
Across the school we choose pieces of music from the Charanga Listening centre to encourage active listening and appraising music from different genres and eras on a weekly basis in lesson times. Children throughout the school sing during collective worship times. We have a weekly whole school singing practice and singing plays a prominent part in all school productions and church services at Harvest, Christmas, Easter and at the End of the School year.
Children are also given the opportunity to sing or play an instrument solo or in small groups through lessons by external peripatetic teachers and then share their skills in assemblies or at whole school performances. Furthermore, in years 5 or 6 children have the opportunity to participate in ‘Young Voices’. The Young Voices experience is not simply a children’s choir concert, it is one of the largest children’s choir concerts in the world where children perform alongside 5,000-8,000 other children as a single choir to capacity audiences of family and friends.
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 to all children. To support children with SEND, we look at a range of factors, including classroom organisation, teaching materials and support by teaching staff, so we enable the child to learn more effectively. This ensures that our teaching is matched to the child’s needs.
In key stage 1 and 2 children’s work is assessed in music by making informal judgements during observations by the teacher during lessons. 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 in music is indicated annually in the end-of-year report.