Purpose of Study

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.

Intent

At Woodcot Primary School, our intent in music education is to foster a lifelong appreciation for music and to empower pupils with the confidence to engage creatively and critically. We aim to ensure that all pupils:

Acquire broad musical knowledge: Providing exposure to diverse genres and cultures.

Develop instrumental and vocal skills: Enabling pupils to play an instrument and sing with confidence.

Cultivate creativity: Encouraging composition and improvisation for personal expression.

Enhance listening skills: Training pupils to listen actively and respond critically to music.

Promote teamwork: Facilitating collaboration through ensemble participation.

Implementation

Our music curriculum is delivered through engaging pedagogical strategies:

Comprehensive Curriculum: Following the National Curriculum and using the Kapow Primary Music Scheme for high-quality resources.

Skilled Staff: Teachers are subject specialists who receive regular professional development to enhance their teaching.

Cross-Curricular Opportunities: Integrating music with subjects like history and literacy.

Extracurricular Activities: Offering choir, instrument lessons, and performances to nurture talent and social skills.

Assessment for Learning: Implementing continuous formative and summative assessments for tracking progress.

Community Engagement: Encouraging performances in the community and links with local musicians.

Impact

The impact of our music programme is evident through:

High Standards: Increasing numbers of pupils exceed expected music standards by Key Stage 2.

Engagement and Enjoyment: High levels of enthusiasm for music, with many pupils expressing aspirations for further study.

Personal Development: Enhanced resilience, confidence, and communication skills through participation in music.

Cultivating Inclusivity: Engagement opportunities for all pupils, celebrating diverse talents in ensembles and performances.

Community Impact: Positive contributions to the school's reputation through collaborative performances and connections to local musicians.

Autumn

Exploring sound

Children explore how they can use their voice and bodies to make sounds, experiment with tempo and dynamics when playing instruments, identify sounds in the environment and differentiate between them.

Celebration Music

Learning about the music from a range of cultural and religious celebrations, including Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwankzaa and Christmas.

Spring

Music and Movement

Creating simple actions to songs, learning how to move to a beat and expressing feelings and emotions through movement to music.

Musical stories

A unit based on traditional children's tales and songs. Moving to music with instruction, changing movements to match the tempo, pitch or dynamic of the piece; understanding that music and instruments can be used to convey moods or represent characters; playing an instrument as part of a group story.

Summer

Transport

Using voices, bodies and instruments to explore different types of transport, identify and mimic transport sounds and interpret and perform a simple score.

Big band

Learning about what makes a musical instrument, the four different groups of musical instruments, following a beat using an untuned instrument and performing a practised song to a small audience.

Autumn

Tempo (Snail and Mouse)

Use bodies and instruments to listen and respond to pieces of music with fast and slow speeds; learn and perform a rhyme and a song focussing on fast and slow.

Pitch

Learning how to identify high and low notes and to compose a simple tune to represent a superhero.

Spring

Musical symbols

Children combine all the musical concepts learned throughout Year 1 for an underwater-themed performance incorporating instrumental, vocal and body sounds.

Pulse and rhythm

Children learn to identify the difference between the pulse and rhythm of a song and consolidate their understanding of these concepts through listening and performing activities.

Summer

Timbre and rhythmic patterns

Through fairy tales, children are introduced to the concept of timbre; learning that different sounds can represent characters and key moments in a story. They explore clapping along to the syllables of words and phrases before creating rhythmic patterns to tell a familiar fairy tale.

Classic music, dynamics and tempo

Children use their bodies and instruments to listen and respond to pieces of classical music that represent animals. They learn and perform a song as a class and compose a short section of music as a group, with a focus on dynamics and tempo.

Autumn

Singing (Theme: On this island)

Learning folk songs and creating sounds to represent three contrasting landscapes: seaside, countryside and city.

Structure

Developing an understanding of structure by exploring and ordering rhythms.

Spring

Musical me

Children learn to sing the song ‘Once a Man Fell in a Well’ and to play it using tuned percussion. Using letter notation to write a melody.

On this island: British songs and sounds

Creating sounds to represent three contrasting landscapes: seaside, countryside and city.

Summer

West African call and response song

Using instruments to represent animals, copying rhythms, learning a traditional Ghanaian call and response song and recognising simple notation, progressing to creating call and response rhythms.

Dynamics, timbre, tempo and motifs

Developing knowledge and understanding of dynamics, timbre, tempo and instruments; learning to compose and play motifs.

Autumn

Ballads

Children learn what ballads are, how to identify their features and how to convey different emotions when performing them. Using an animation as inspiration, children carefully select vocabulary to describe the story, before turning them into lyrics by incorporating rhyming words and following the structure of a traditional ballad.

Developing singing technique (Theme: the Vikings)

The children develop their singing technique. Learning to keep in time and work on musical notation and rhythm, the unit finishes with a group performance of a song with actions.

Spring

Creating compositions in response to animation (Mountains)

Learning to tell stories through music. Listening to music and considering the narrative it could represent. Paying close attention to the dynamics, pitch and tempo and how they change. Creating original compositions to match an animation, building up layers of texture.

Pentatonic melodies and composition (Chinese New Year)

Revising key musical terminology, playing and creating pentatonic melodies, composing a piece of music using layered melodies.

Summer

Traditional instruments and improvisation (Theme: India)

Children listen to a range of rag and tal music, identifying traditional instruments as well as creating their own improvisations and performing as a class.

Jazz

Learning about ragtime style music, traditional jazz and scat singing. Children create a jazz motif using a swung rhythm.

Autumn

Guitar

Spring 

Recorder

Summer 

Keyboard

Autumn

Musical Theatre

Children are introduced to musical theatre, learning how singing, acting and dancing can be combined to give an overall performance.

Blues

Children are introduced to this famous genre of music and its history, and learn to identify the key features and mood of Blues music and its importance and purpose. They also get to grips with the 12-bar Blues and the Blues scale, and combine these to create an improvised piece with a familiar, repetitive backing.

Spring

South and West Africa

Children learn ‘Shosholoza’, a traditional South African song, play the accompanying chords using tuned percussion and learn to play the djembe. They will also learn a traditional West African drum and add some dance moves ready to perform the song in its entirety.

Composition to represent the festival of colour (Theme: Holi festival)

Exploring the associations between music, sounds and colour; composing and performing their own musical composition to represent Holi, the Hindu festival of colour that celebrates the beginning of spring and the triumph over good and evil.

Summer

Looping and remixing

In this engaging topic, children learn about how dance music is created, focusing particularly on the use of loops.

Composing and performing a Leavers' song

Children spend the topic creating their very own leavers’ song personal to their experiences as a class.

Autumn

Baroque

The children will be exploring the music and composers of the Baroque Period and investigating the structural and stylistic features of their work.

Theme and variations (Theme: Pop Art)

Children explore the musical concept of theme and variations and discover how rhythms can ‘translate’ onto different instruments.

Spring

Dynamics, pitch and texture (Theme: Coast - Fingal’s Cave by Mendelssohn)

Appraising the work of Mendelssohn and further developing improvisation and composition skills.

Songs of World War 2

Developing greater accuracy in pitch and control; identifying pitches within an octave when singing and using knowledge of pitch to develop confidence when singing in parts.

Summer

Film music

Exploring and identifying the characteristics of film music. Creating a composition and graphic score to perform alongside a film.

Composing and performing a Leavers' song

Children spend the topic creating their very own leavers’ song personal to their experiences as a class.