Music Intent

At St. Faiths the children will develop a wide range of musical skills.

They will know how to use tuned and un-tuned percussion, develop their listening skills, use their voice expressively and be competent composers.

Implementation of Music

We aim to encourage our children to remember knowledge and build on their prior learning by ensuring we carefully consider how knowledge is sequenced. Teachers must understand what pupils must know and be able to do in each subject by the end of each academic year; they must recognise what has come before and what pupils will continue to learn in the next year.

Our curriculum design is based on these main principles:
1) Learning is most effective when spaced rather than blocked.
2) Retrieval of previously learned content is frequent and regular, which increases both storage and retrieval strength.

Some of our content is subject specific, whilst other content is combined in a cross-curricular approach.

Early Years

In the EYFS, the ways in which every child engages with other people and their environment – playing and exploring, active learning, and creating and thinking critically – underpin learning and development across all areas and support the child to remain an effective and motivated learner.

Our EYFS curriculum for music is the building blocks in which all future learning will take place and through following the Charanga scheme, we start them on a journey which will take them into Key stage 1.

3 and 4 Year Olds  

Language and Communication 

Sing a large repertoire of songs.  

Psychical Development  

Use large-muscle movements to wave flags and streamers, paint and make marks to music. 

Expressive Arts and Design  

• Listen with increased attention to sounds.  

• Respond to what they have heard, expressing their thoughts and feelings.  

• Remember and sing entire songs.  

• Sing the pitch of a tone sung by another person (‘pitch match’).  

• Sing the melodic shape (moving melody, such as up and down, down and up) of familiar songs.  

• Create their own songs or improvise a song around one they know.  

• Play instruments with increasing control to express their feelings and ideas. 

Reception 

Language and Communication  

• Listen carefully to rhymes and songs, paying attention to how they sound.  

• Learn rhymes, poems and songs. 

Physical Development  

• Combine different movements with ease and fluency. 

Expressive Arts and Design  

• Explore, use and refine a variety of artistic effects to express their ideas and feelings.  

• Return to and build on their previous learning, refining ideas and developing their ability to represent them.  

• Create collaboratively, sharing ideas, resources and skills.  

• Listen attentively, move to and talk about music, expressing their feelings and responses.  

• Sing in a group or on their own, increasingly matching the pitch and following the melody. 

• Explore and engage in music making and dance, performing solo or in groups. 

Key Stage 1

In accordance with the National Curriculum, children are taught to:

• use their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes
• play tuned and untuned instruments musically
• listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music
• experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the inter-related dimensions of music.

In Key Stage 1, Music is taught using the Charanga Music School Scheme which aims to enable children to understand musical concepts through a repetition-based approach to learning. Learning about the same musical concept through different musical activities enables a more secure, deeper learning and mastery of musical skills. With the scheme, we provide an integrated, practical, exploratory and child-led approach to musical learning. Lessons are relevant and take account of children’s different starting points. Consideration is given to how greater depth will be taught, learnt and demonstrated within each lesson, as well as how learners will be supported in line with the school’s commitment to inclusion.

Cross curricular outcomes in Music are specifically planned for. The local community is fully utilised, as appropriate, to achieve the desired outcomes, with extensive opportunities for learning outside the classroom embedded in practice.

Impact of Music

• Children are confident in sharing their knowledge and skills of music through discussion and performance.
• They will have enjoyed practising a wide range of skills, demonstrating different elements of music.
• Children will be enthusiastic about the subject of music and will have made good progress in their knowledge and skills throughout their time in our school.

The distinctive Christian values of respect, compassion, trust, justice, friendship and community are promoted through the experiences we offer to every child, in all areas of the curriculum.