Music
Music plays a vital role in our primary curriculum, enriching children’s learning and supporting their development in ways that reach far beyond the classroom. Through singing, listening, composing and performing, children develop creativity, confidence and self-expression while building essential skills such as teamwork, concentration and resilience. Music helps children make sense of the world, connect with different cultures and emotions, and experience the joy of achievement. By embedding high-quality music education throughout primary school, we nurture well‑rounded learners and nurture a lifelong love of music.
Mrs Archibald is the acting music lead (Mrs Bate is music lead)
Intent
We intend through our music curriculum and extra-curricular activities to promote a curiosity and love of music. Our curriculum aims to empower our pupils to become independent and resilient, and to grow and appreciation of music. We want to equip pupils with the tools they need to become creative musicians and to see how they can use music in their wider life experiences. The curriculum is planned with the intention of ensuring that all pupils have an opportunity to engage and achieve success.
Implementation
St Ignatius’ Catholic Primary School ensures that our teaching staff are fully equipped with expert subject knowledge to support the delivery of the exceptional music curriculum. Teachers present the curriculum content clearly supported by Charanga scheme of work, which break the unit knowledge, concepts and skills down for each lesson in each year group. In addition to Charanga, we implement further learning which teaches the pupils about the different periods in music, different instrumental families & musical instruments are taught from EYFS to Y6. This is taught in a developmental approach throughout the school on a rolling 2 year programme. Our children also have the opportunity to join the school choir, sing in fortnightly singing practice and join the school rock band.
The curriculum is delivered through a subject-specific approach, which supports pupils to develop the key concepts and knowledge of the music curriculum. Each lesson within a unit of work is carefully crafted and builds upon what has been previously taught from one year to the next.
We regularly adapt the music curriculum to build upon the learning opportunities and assessment end points for each year group and ensures progression and repetition in terms of embedding key learning, knowledge and skills. We listen to pupil voice of the subject to support with adapting our curriculum. The way music is taught follows a specific and consistent structure.
Pupils explore and practice the knowledge, skills and techniques involved in the unit and discuss their observations of different genres of music. They have an opportunity to discuss the musical elements of the pieces and learn how to perform a piece of music using an instrument. They then use these elements to inspire their own composition.
Impact
We use both formative and summative assessment information in music. Assessment informs learning to ensure that all pupils including disadvantage and those with SEND achieve highly and acquire the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life. This helps us provide the best possible support for all of our pupils. The end points for each phase have been carefully mapped out and further broken down. This means that the essential knowledge, skills and concepts in music are progressive and build year on year. Our well-constructed curriculum in music leads to pupils’ successful learning.
