Music

Music Development Plan - 2024-25

Music Curriculum

Intent:

Our music curriculum uses Kapow Primary’s music curriculum as its core. The intention of our music curriculum is first and foremost to help children to 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 curriculum 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.

Children will develop the musical skills of singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, improvising and composing music, and listening and responding to music. They will develop an understanding of the history and cultural context of the music that they listen to and learn how music can be written down. Through music, our curriculum helps children develop transferable skills such as team-working, leadership, creative thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, and presentation and performance skills. These skills are vital to children’s development as learners and have a wider application in their general lives outside and beyond school.

Our curriculum enables pupils to meet the end of key stage attainment targets outlined in the National curriculum and the aims of the scheme align with those in the National curriculum.
 

Implementation:

Our curriculum takes a holistic approach to music, in which the individual strands below are woven together to create engaging and enriching learning experiences:

Each unit combines these strands within a cross-curricular topic designed to capture pupils’ imagination and encourage them to explore music enthusiastically. Over the course of the scheme, children will be taught how to sing fluently and expressively and play tuned and untuned instruments accurately and with control. They will learn to recognise, demonstrate and name the interrelated dimensions of music - pitch, duration, tempo, timbre, structure, texture and dynamics - and use these expressively in their own improvisations and compositions.

The Kapow Primary scheme follows the spiral curriculum model where previous skills and knowledge are returned to and built upon. Children progress in terms of tackling more complex tasks and doing more simple tasks better, as well as developing understanding and knowledge of the history of music, staff, and other musical notations, the interrelated dimensions of music and more.
 

Pupils have a music lesson each week, and in each lesson, pupils will 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 strategies 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.

Adaptive teaching guidance is available for teachers for every lesson to ensure that lessons can be accessed by all pupils and opportunities to stretch pupils’ learning are available when required. Knowledge organisers for each unit support pupils in building a foundation of factual knowledge by encouraging recall of key facts and vocabulary.

Strong subject knowledge is vital for staff to be able to deliver a highly effective and robust music curriculum. Each unit of lessons includes multiple teacher videos to develop subject knowledge and support ongoing CPD, aiding teachers in their own acquisition of musical skills and knowledge.
 

Impact:

The impact of our curriculum is constantly monitored through both formative and summative assessment opportunities. Each lesson includes guidance to support teachers in assessing pupils against the learning objectives and at the end of each unit there is often a performance element
where teachers can make a summative assessment of pupils’ learning. Knowledge organisers for each unit support pupils by providing a highly visual record of the key learning from the unit, encouraging recall of practical skills, key knowledge and vocabulary.

After experiencing our curriculum, pupils should leave primary school equipped with a range of skills to enable them to succeed in their secondary education and to be able to enjoy and appreciate music throughout their lives.

The expected impact of following our curriculum is that 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 influenced by the wider cultural, social, and historical contexts in which it is developed.
✓ Understand the various ways in which music can be written down to support performing 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 curriculum for Music.

We use Enquire Learning Trust’s foundation subject assessment system, which shows pupils’ understanding in both substantive and disciplinary knowledge, and identifies next steps for learning and areas to be the focus of retrieval practice to ensure pupils know more and remember more -and can do more - in music.
 

Instrument tuition

We make use of peripatetic teachers from Tees Valley Music service to deliver whole-class instrument tuition to every child in KS2 in school. This is on top of the weekly music curriculum lesson. We use our school funding to offer this for completely free! The instruments learned in each year group are as follows:

• Year 3 & 4 - recorder (cycle A) and ukulele (cycle B)
• Year 5 & 6 - guitar (cycle A) and trumpet (cycle B)