Intention

At Thornton Primary we aim to inspire our children to have a love of music and a desire to learn how to become musicians. Is it our intention to help children 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 scheme of work 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.

We encourage children to develop music skills of singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, improvising and composing music, alongside listening and responding to music. They also develop an understanding of the history and cultural context of the music that they listen to and learn how it can be written down.

At Thornton Primary, we aim to provide high quality music education for all our children through our scheme of work. All children will have the opportunity to learn how to play tuned and untuned instruments, being taught in Key Stage 2 by a specialist music teacher. Overall, our music curriculum intends to engage and inspire all our children in order to increase self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement.

Implementation

At Thornton Primary, we utilise Kapow Primary’s Music scheme of work. The scheme takes a holistic approach to music, in which the individual strands are woven together to create engaging and enriching learning experiences. The strands are as follows:

• Performing
• Listening
• Composing
• The history of music
• The inter-related dimensions of music

Over the course of the scheme, children will be taught how to sing fluently and expressively and play tunned and untuned instruments accurately and with control. They will learn to recognise and name interrelated dimensions of music – pitch, duration, tempo, timbre, structure, textures and dynamics. Our children will then have the opportunity to use this knowledge in their own improvisations and compositions. The learning of how to play a tunned instruments is taught by a specialist teacher.

Our music scheme of work is mapped so that all of the National Curriculum attainment targets are met. It shows progression of skills taught within each year group and how these skills develop year on year to ensure attainment targets are securely met by the end of each key stage. The Kapow scheme follows a spiral curriculum model where previous skills and knowledge are returned to and built upon.

SEND

Differentiated guidance is available for every lesson to ensure that lessons can be accessed and enjoyed by all. Our music specialist teacher works with small groups of children of similar ability. This enables his music teaching to be tailored to the needs of the children.

Curriculum Links

In each lesson, pupils 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 styles 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.

Vocabulary

The Kapow scheme of work includes a comprehensive list of vocabulary that are to be taught in each unit. Our children are encouraged to use specifically designed knowledge organisers where they can record key facts that they have learnt and definitions of vocabulary.

Impact

The Kapow scheme of work and related knowledge organisers include key learning objectives that are used to assess children’s learning. These are used throughout each unit as ongoing teacher assessment and is recorded on O’Track, reporting if children are “on track” or “not on track”. Additional to this, we return to a unit at a later date through spaced assessment. This may involve a quiz to recall key knowledge or vocabulary or a task to practise skills.

The impact of the scheme is that our 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 influences 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 performance 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 and EYFS curriculum.