Intent

At Helmdon School, we aim to teach a music curriculum which engages children and encourages and grows their love of music.  We are committed to developing a curiosity for the subject; we encourage them to listen to all styles and to have informed discussions about music in order to develop an understanding and acceptance of the validity and importance of all types of music. We want our children to gain a firm understanding of what music is through listening, singing, playing, evaluating, analysing, and composing across a wide variety of historical periods, styles, traditions, and musical genres We aim to provide children with the opportunity to progress to the next level of their creative excellence.

Implementation

Music is taught weekly across the school, using the online programme, Charanga, which allows children to access the musical curriculum in a fun and engaging way, further promoting a love of learning. Charanga lessons are planned in sequences to provide children with the opportunities to review, remember, deepen and apply their understanding. The progressive nature of the themes within Charanga allow the children to build upon what they have previously learnt, while challenging them to develop and extend this knowledge to take their creativity to the next level.

The elements of music are taught from Year 1, where children are introduced to the language of music in a fun and practical way. Children learn to dissect music and understand how it is made, played, appreciated and analysed. As they progress through the school, they learn how to play the glockenspiel, the recorder and a variety of untuned percussion instruments. Playing various instruments enables the children to use a range of methods to create notes, as well as how to read basic music notation. They also learn how to compose, focusing on different dimensions of music, which in turn feeds their understanding when listening to, playing or analysing music. At some point In Key Stage 2 (dependant on class structure), children will spend a term learning to play an instrument, such as the violin, as a whole class, culminating in a performance to their parents and the rest of the school.

Our music curriculum ensures children sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate. This is embedded in the classroom activities as well as weekly singing assemblies, Musician of the Month assemblies and in the learning of instruments. Individual musicians are spotlighted and celebrated in weekly sharing assemblies, Extra-curricular provision enriches the classroom curriculum through instrument lessons provided by our local music hub, NMPAT and a choir for KS2. We have regular musical performances throughout the year.

Impact

The impact of our clear, comprehensive scheme of work will ensure that:

Children will achieve age related expectations in music at the end of their cohort year.

Children will retain knowledge that is pertinent to music.

Children will have the opportunity to express their creativity in the form of music.

Video evidence of knowledge and progress will be recorded using an online journal, Seesaw, which acts as a record of coverage and enables the teacher and subject leader to scrutinise and assess learning. This will be kept alongside termly 3-tiered class assessment logs maintained by the music teacher, in order to inform assessment at various points across the academic year.