Intent
At Methley Primary School, our mission is to provide a transformative cradle to career education that allows our children to enjoy lives of choice and opportunity. Our school ethos is at the heart of all we do: we want our children to be motivated to learn, to persevere and to recognise their own successes in a variety of contexts (M+P=S). Through the teaching of music our intention is that children gain a firm understanding of what music is through listening, playing, evaluating, analysing and composing across a wide variety of musical genres. We want our children to become respectful citizens of the world, our music curriculum supports this by immersing them in music from different time periods around the world. Children are motivated to be interested and learn to play different instruments throughout school. Our music curriculum provides many opportunities for children to develop their perseverance particularly when learning to play and composing. Throughout the teaching of music, children will develop their collaboration, communication and critical thinking skills. They celebrate success through reviewing and evaluating their work.
Implementation
The music curriculum ensures children sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate. This is embedded in the classroom activities as well as the singing (a term for each phase), assemblies, various concerts and performances, the learning of instruments, and the school band and choir. The elements of music are taught in the classroom lessons so that children are able to use some of the language of music to dissect it, and understand how it is made, played, appreciated and analysed. Our children learn how to play an instrument (drums, recorders, violins, guitars, steel pans and clarinets). In doing so 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 the inter-related 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 also teach technical vocabulary such as volume, pitch, beat and rhythm and encourage children to discuss music using these terms. Each Year group has a comprehensive skills progression document which ensures that children have the relevant knowledge, skills and understanding to prepare them for Year 7 and beyond. Alongside our music scheme, each year group also experiences whole class instrument teaching.
Helpful Documents
