Music

Intent

Music is led by a member of staff, who is a passionate musician and believes that all children should have to opportunity to experience a broad and rich musical curriculum. We aim to capture our children’s enthusiasm through Charanga, and nurture it through Rock Steady, peripatetic instrumental lessons (recorder, piano, trumpet and ukulele), choir and whole-school singing to develop life-long interest within our inclusive culture and beyond. We are committed to providing a wealth of experience for children to enjoy listening and responding to music; to acquire a musical vocabulary; to perform alone with others and develop their skills to play, compose with a range of instruments and embrace artists and genres.
We believe that all children should have access to quality music teaching in every year group, regardless of the previous experiences of the staff who are teaching the subject. Because of this, we have chosen to adopt the Charanga Musical School Scheme as it provides teachers with week-by-week lesson support in each year group across the school. The scheme is ideal for both specialist and non-specialist teachers as it provides all documentation to support teachers to develop their subject knowledge. Due to the design of the scheme, children cover multiple objectives within each lesson. The interrelated dimensions of music are woven through each unit to encourage the development of musical skills through a practical, exploratory, and child-led approach to musical learning.

Implementation

Having researched commercial schemes for Music we decided to implement the Charanga scheme. The learning within this scheme is based on; Listening and Appraising; Musical Activities — creating and exploring; and Singing and Performing. The music curriculum ensures children sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate. This is embedded in the classroom activities as well as the weekly singing assemblies, various concerts and performances, the learning of instruments and the joining of one of our musical ensembles. The elements of music are taught in the classroom lessons so that children can use some of the language of music to dissect it, and understand how it is made, played, appreciated and analysed. They get to understand the different principle of each method of creating 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, playing, or analysing music. Composing or performing using body percussion and vocal sounds is also part of the curriculum, which develops the understanding of musical elements without the added complexity of an instrument. We ensure that by the time they leave OLMC they have experienced a variety of musical activities including recorder and piano lessons and whole class ukulele and trumpet lessons. Progression booklets have been produced to recap prior learning, explain the new learning, and give an insight into where this learning will take them periodically.

Impact

At OLMC children have access to a varied programme, which allows them to discover areas of music, this leads to achievement, self-confidence, interaction with and awareness of others, and self-reflection. Music will also develop an understanding of culture and history, both in relation to children individually, as well as ethnicities from across the world. Children can enjoy music in as many ways as they choose – either as listener, creator, or performer. They can dissect music and comprehend its parts. They can sing and feel a pulse. Through Charanga they understand how to further develop skills less known to them, should they ever develop an interest in their lives.

We measure the impact of our curriculum and the progression of pupils through the following:

• A celebration of learning for each year group, displayed in school, which demonstrates progression across the school.
• Pupils discussion about their learning.
• Concerts and recordings of practical shared music.