MUSIC AT SHELLEY FIRST SCHOOL Intent At Shelley First School, music plays an integral role in bringing our community together through singing, playing and performing both in school and in the wider community. Long term planning, following the National Curriculum, ensures progression and development of our children’s understanding of musical concepts, knowledge and skills across all key stages. By the time they leave our school, our children will have had opportunities to gain a firm understanding of all aspects of music through listening, singing, playing, evaluating, analysing and composing across a wide variety of historical periods, styles, traditions and musical genres. At Shelley we believe music is for all.
Implementation Music at Shelley First School delivers the requirements of the EYFS Framework, National Curriculum and the Model Music Curriculum: Key Stages 1 and 2 through the ‘Charanga’ scheme of work. All classes are taught by a specialist teacher for one hour per week (with additional opportunities in continuous provision for EYFS). The scheme is adapted and personalised to meet the individual needs of our children. The curriculum ensures children listen, sing, play, perform and evaluate throughout the year and across all key stages through age-appropriate repertoire using a range of notes that are comfortable for the age of our pupils. This is delivered through classroom lessons, continuous provision, whole-school assemblies and various performance opportunities. Charanga takes a ‘spiral curriculum’ approach. As lessons progress through the units and year groups, the key learning is repeated, musical skills are reinforced and the learning deepens. Children quickly become familiar with the musical activities, through which they acquire new, or reinforce previous, musical knowledge and understanding. The lessons are carefully sequenced in the programme to ensure progression and opportunities to review, remember, retrieve, deepen and apply their knowledge, skills and understanding. Listening is fundamental to musical understanding and our curriculum provides opportunities for children to listen to and discuss a broad range of music from a wide range of cultures and traditions. As the children move through the Scheme, they acquire new knowledge and skills and deepen their understanding and application of previous learning. This spiral approach leads to deeper, more secure learning and musical mastery Accurate musical language is introduced and utilised during listening sessions, while discussing and exploring how music is made, played, appreciated and analysed. In the classroom, our children learn to play the recorder and ukulele and various tuned, untuned and body percussion. This allows for exploration of a range of methods for creating notes/sounds and reading basic music notation (formal and informal). The children learn how to improvise and compose focussing on different dimensions of music which in turn develops their understanding when listening, playing and analysing music. Understanding, knowledge, skills and exploration of music from other cultures taught in the classroom are reinforced through weekly singing assemblies.
Impact Music enables children to broaden their understanding of changes in cultures and traditions over time, in their own community and beyond. Children have the opportunity to enjoy, listen, perform, discuss and analyse a wide variety of music as a listener, creator and performer. Our children will begin to listen critically and sing confidently. Discussions in music allow children to voice their thoughts, opinions and ideas. They listen to those of others, acknowledging that these may be (and often are) different and that this is a positive experience.