How do we teach music?
We have an ambitious music curriuculm at Didsbury CE which plays a vital role in preparing every child with the knowldege, skills and understanding needed to engage with an apprecation of listening to, enjoying and performing music for life beyond the primary years. The curriculum content and design improves children knowledge of key musical vocabulary and terms. Children are given the opportunity to join the school choir in KS2 and to learn to play a tuned/non-tuned percussion instrument from the music trolley or have individual lessons with our visiting peripatetic teachers. Children in year 4 will have access to whole class instrumental teaching for 1 and a half terms in the form of whole class recorder lessons taught by the class teacher. They will begin to be taught to read notation for the first time. Children are able to have individual music lessons in school with visiting peripetic specialist music teachers. There are no financial barriers for pupils on pupil premuim to access to these lessons.
A curriculum for life for all
We have an ambitious music curriuculm at Didsbury CE which plays a vital role in preparing every child with the knowldege, skills and understanding needed to engage with an apprecation of listening to, enjoying and performing music for life beyond the primary years. The curriculum content and design improves children knowledge of key musical vocabulary and terms. Children are given the opportunity to join the school choir in KS2 and to learn to play a tuned/non-tuned percussion instrument from the music trolley or have individual lessons with our visiting peripatetic teachers. Children in year 4 will have access to whole class instrumental teaching for 1 and a half terms in the form of whole class recorder lessons taught by the class teacher. They will begin to be taught to read notation for the first time. Children are able to have individual music lessons in school with visiting peripetic specialist music teachers. There are no financial barriers for pupils on pupil premuim to access to these lessons.
Curriculum end points
The music curriculum is designed with clear key skills for the end of each year and ultimately each key stage. The music curriculum that is taught in each year group is designed to build to those end points. There is a list of key skills and knowledge that are designed for each year group to achieve by the end of that year which are detailed in the Didsbury CE music skills and knowledge curriculum.
Curriculum planning and sequencing
Music is planned in line with the statements laid out in the national curriculum and with cross-curricular links where possible.
Children in EYFS are taught music through Expressive arts and Design. Children have a weekly taught music lesson and learn to sing a bank of songs/chants often linked to the half termly topic. They use body percussion and untuned percussion instruments to explore pulse and rhythm leading to improvisation and composition. In addition, children listen to a wide variety of diverse music and appraise it using musical vocabulary.
Children in years 1 to 6 are taught music using Charanga, a spiral curriculum. designed specifically for the teaching of music in primary schools, Charanga lessons are planned in sequences to provide children with the opportunities to review, remember, deepen and apply their understanding. Charanga provides many examples of music styles and genres from different times and places. These are explored through the language of music via active listening, performing and composing activities, which enable understanding of the context and genre.
The aims of our music curriculum are to develop pupils who:
- Enjoy and have an appreciation for music
- Listen to, review and evalute music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles, and traditions.
- Listen to and evlaute the work of a variety of diverse composers including the greta composers.
- Can sing and use their voices to create different effects.
- Create and compse music both on their own and with others.
- Use a range of muisical language.
- Make judgements and express personal prefrences about the quialty and style of muisc.
- Have opportunites to plau a wide variety of instruments b both tuned and untunrd.
- Use technology if approprite.
- Take part in performances with an awareness of audience.
