'Music is the universal language of mankind.'

                    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Intent

Through the  high quality teaching and learning, we aim to provide opportunities for pupils to participate and flourish in a range of different  musical activities in order to give them a life-long positive attitude towards music. 

At the core of this teaching are our Divine Mercy values:

Respect for Life

Love

Solidarity

Truth and Justice

The National Curriculum for music aims to ensure that all pupils:

• Perform, listen to, review and evaluate music

• Are taught to sing, create and compose music

• Understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated

Along with this our music curriculum aims to develop pupils to:

• Participate in a variety of musical experiences through which we aim to build up the confidence of all children. 
• Develop the children’s ability to understand rhythm and follow the beat.
• Learn about the structure and organisation of music through singing songs. 
• Listen to and appreciate different forms of music. 
• Develop descriptive language skills in music lessons when learning about how music can represent different feelings, emotions and narratives. 
• Develop technical vocabularies such as volume, pitch, beat and rhythm and encourage children to discuss music using these terms.
• Understand the value of music in a wider context and its role within the church and the local community

Implementation

In order to ensure the children are provided with the best possible opportunity to have a life-long love of music we ensure that: 

• Music lessons engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and develop their talent as musicians, and in turn increase their self-confidence, creativity and a sense of achievement. 
• Pupils progress and begin to develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen to different genres. 

Throughout the school, we use an online music scheme called Charanga. This scheme gives children the opportunity to engage with music through interactive and visual resources.  It provides wide exposure to different musical genres with lots of opportunities to explore and grow as musicians and singers.

In addition, in Key stage 1 and key stage 2 professional musicians teach each class every 2 weeks for 30mintues. They incorporate their own skills, Charanga and our learning challenge topics into their lessons to ensure all children progress.

They also hold singing assemblies weekly for ks1 and ks2 to allow the children to showcase their learning.

In EYFS music is taught by an in-house specialist for 30 minutes bi-weekly.  

The school also has whole class ‘wider opportunities’ for year 3 where children are taught a specific musical instrument for a school year. In Year 3, the pupils are currently learning the recorder every week for 30mins as well as incorporating the national curriculum into their lessons. 

Additional opportunities are also offered which include:

• Key stage 2 choir which performs regularly in school and at events in the local community.
• Big band, which incorporates lots of musical instruments; guitars, violins, keyboards, glockenspiels and percussion instruments which has performed at events in school. 
• Steel pans which is an amazing opportunity for the children to take part in the steel pan orchestra. 
• Ks2 violin group which practises every week during lunchtime by a specialist teacher.
• ‘Awards for Young Musicians’ come in weekly to work with groups of talented violin children from low-income families.  This is aimed at helping them to overcome financial and social obstacles to music participation. This programme helps young musicians from across the UK to grow, flourish and fulfil their musical potential
• Opportunities are taken to perform in class, in whole assemblies and also to parents and the wider community

Impact

Our music curriculum is of high quality with high expectations set for each of our pupils.  It is challenging and demonstrates progression throughout key stages.  If children are matching these expectations, they will be deemed to be making good or greater progress.  

In addition to this we measure the progress of our children through the following methods: 

• A reflection on pupil standards achieved against the planned outcomes;  

• A celebration of successful development through assemblies;  
• Pupil discussions about their learning; 
• Observations and team teaching to ensure high standards of teaching and learning.
• Continued professional development. 
• Folder scrutinies. 
• Learning walks.