Musicians at Queen's Crescent

Being a Musician

Lead Engineer: Mrs Alison Guest

Intent:

Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. A high quality music education should engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon.

Aims:

The national curriculum for music aims to ensure that all pupils:

perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians
learn to sing and to use their voices, to create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, use technology appropriately and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence
understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the inter-related dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.

How do we teach Music and why has this approach been chosen?

Music is taught through our enquiry-led curriculum (see ‘Our Curriculum’ section of the website) and as a stand alone subject when it is not part of an enquiry. As ‘Musicians’ pupils learn the relevant disciplinary and substantive knowledge and then apply it through an enquiry challenge. Enquiries are carefully planned to ensure they are meaningful, localised (where possible) and progressive. Teachers make it explicit to the children that they are learning music skills and encouraging them to think like ‘Musicians’. When music is not part of an enquiry, teachers follow a bespoke music scheme, written by the lead musician.

Our music curriculum progression grids are used in order to ensure disciplinary and substantive knowledge build year on year. This ensures that by the end of year 6, pupils have the skills and knowledge to support their future studies.

What our music lessons involve:

Listening skills	Children are given opportunities to listen to works from a famous composer. KS1 – Listen to a range of music. KS2 – Appreciate and understand a range of music from different traditions and from great composers and musicians. Each class will study one piece of music each term
Performing	Singing / Chanting Using percussion – pitched and unpitched. Body percussion.
Composing	Children will experiment with sounds to create their own music using the progressive skills learnt in music lessons.
Appraising	Children will talk about the music they have created and suggest ways to improve. They will use musical language to describe music they have listened to and compare and contrast different pieces of music.
Instruments	Children use percussion instruments (pitched and unpitched) in their music lessons. Children are given the opportunity to learn to play the ukulele with the music specialist teacher. Peripetetic teachers visit the school to teach individual pupils. (eg brass)

Engineering outcomes:

Music is monitored by the Musician lead throughout the year in the form of monitoring planning, lesson observations and pupil conferencing. Classroom displays evidence the work the children have completed throughout a music unit.

Teachers continually assess children in music lessons using the skills shown in the music skills progression. Progression grids also act as a reference for end of year expectations for each year group and teachers are aware of the entry and exit points for their children.

The lead musician works closely with the link governor to assess the impact of the music curriculum each year.