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 BHPS, we provide children with a challenging and engaging music curriculum, which goes above and beyond the requirements of the National Curriculum outlined above. We aim to help children to feel that they are musical and to develop a life-long love of music. Children will acquire a growing body of technical and constructive knowledge which should be retained. In addition, we aim to develop their expressive skills by teaching them to become confident performers, composers and listeners.

Our curriculum introduces children to music from all around the world and across generations, teaching children to respect and appreciate the music of all traditions and communities, thus supporting their positive understanding of diversity. We are committed to developing a curiosity for the subject, as well as an understanding and acceptance of the validity and importance of all types of music, and an unbiased respect for the role that music may play in any person’s life. We are committed to ensuring that the children experience a strong musical culture in the school, with varied individual musical instrument tuition, our BHPS choir, whole class instrument tuition, singing, music within performances and a special concert every summer that is solely dedicated to music.

Throughout their study, the children will acquire and develop the technical, constructive and expressive knowledge and skills that have been identified within each unit and across each year group. Technical and constructive knowledge is taught in a sequence that builds gradually and consolidates prior learning. The key concepts of duration, dynamics, notation, pitch, tempo, timbre, texture and structure make up the interrelated dimensions of music and run throughout the units of study.

Kapow’s Primary Music scheme of work enables children to meet the end of key stage attainment targets outlined in the National Curriculum and the aims of the scheme align with these.

Technical and Constructive Knowledge and Skills

Technical and constructive knowledge and skills refers to the technical and wider elements of music. It refers to the inter-related dimensions of music such as duration, dynamics, notation, pitch, tempo, timbre, texture and structure.

These areas of the curriculum focus on developing children’s technical and constructive knowledge and skills required for them to develop as musicians. This is achieved through deliberate practice and allows children to develop and demonstrate fluency of knowledge. It involves learning about music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians.

In our Music Curriculum Depth Map, the progression of knowledge is organised into key concepts and shows how the knowledge builds over time to develop pupils’ understanding.

Expressive Knowledge and Skills

Expressive knowledge and skills in music is the application of the ‘interrelated dimensions of music’ (duration, dynamics, notation, pitch, tempo, timbre, texture, structure) and how this knowledge is used when singing, playing instruments, improvising and composing, to create expressive and original pieces and performances.

Children work independently and collaboratively to apply and combine the dimensions of music to create a specific and desired effect.

This is the interpretation and application of technical and constructive knowledge and skills through performance, composition, appreciation and understanding of the history of music.

Implementation

The music curriculum is based upon Kapow’s Primary Music scheme, which takes a holistic approach to music, in which the key elements below are woven together to create engaging and enriching learning experiences:

• Performance
• Listening
• Composing
• The history of music
• The inter-related dimensions of music

Each five-lesson unit combines these strands within a cross-curricular topic designed to capture children’s imagination and encourage them to explore music enthusiastically. Over the course of the scheme, children will be taught how to sing fluently and expressively; play tuned and untuned instruments accurately and with control. They will learn to recognise and name the interrelated dimensions of music – pitch, duration, tempo, timbre, structure, texture and dynamics – and use these expressively in their own improvisations and compositions.

The instrumental scheme lessons complement the Kapow Primary scheme of work and allow children to develop their expertise in using a tuned instrument.

Our Music curriculum is designed to allow children time to think, discuss, practise, explore and embed. This allows time for teaching, practice and repetition – both in a year group and across both key stages. Curriculum coverage is mapped out carefully from EYFS to Year 6 which allows some Key Concepts to be developed at a deeper level of learning, understanding and mastery.

Children will develop the musical skills of singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, improvising and composing music; listening and respond to music. They will develop an understanding of the history and cultural context of the music that they listen to and learn how music can be written down. Through music, our curriculum helps children develop transferable skills such as team-working, leadership, creative thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, presentation and performance skills. These skills are vital to children’s development as learners and have a wider application in their general lives outside and beyond school.

Children will 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.

Lessons seek to introduce new knowledge and concepts in small, logical steps, in line with cognitive load theory. Children’s knowledge will be built up gradually, making links, wherever possible, to previous knowledge and other areas of learning. We seek to further children’s ability to commit new learning to long term memory by assessing their retention and revisiting key knowledge. Potential misconceptions will be addressed through carefully selected lesson content and effective feedback.

At the time of writing, teaching of a large part of the KS2 curriculum is undertaken by a music specialist on a regular basis.

Impact

The expected impact of following the BHPS curriculum and Kapow Primary Music Scheme of work is that children will:

• Be confident performers, composers and listeners and will be able to express themselves musically at and beyond school.
• Show an appreciation and respect for a wide range of musical styles from around the world and will understand how music is influenced by the wider cultural, social and historical context in which it is developed.
• Understand the ways in which music can be written down to support Perform and composing activities.
• Demonstrate and articulate an enthusiasm for music and be able to identify their own personal musical preferences.
• Meet the end of key stage expectation outlined in the National Curriculum for Music
• Ultimately, our children will have developed a passion for music and be discovering their own musical interests and preferences.