Our music curriculum is designed to enable children to grasp a solid understanding of the elements of music and experience a variety of musical styles from around the world, from the past up to modern times. Each unit of work provides children with the opportunity to experience some of these elements, in order to truly develop their skills as a musician.
In addition, our curriculum offers children the experience of playing a tuned musical instrument (the Glockenspiel), which is taught by an experienced professional musician. Children are then able to use and apply this knowledge of tuned instruments through the Music Express scheme in Y4, Y5 and Y6.
Our music curriculum is built around the following: beat, rhythm, pitch, exploration of sound, composition, structure, notation, singing, performance and musical history. These elements run through and across year groups, ensuring children are able to build knowledge over time. Objectives which have a repeated theme link prior learning with new learning and this enables children to make links between the information they learn in order to build knowledge and make musical progress.
From 2022, our Key Stage 2 music curriculum will be enhanced with a musical history day, during which each year group will study a musical genre/style from a different historical period. Our units of study go beyond national curriculum expectations, by including a strong cultural emphasis through learning to play instruments under the guidance of professionals from the music service and through the arts, in particular our Manchester Arts in Education Initiative project, where children in Y6 combine music, drama, dance and art over six months, culminating in a professionally produced public performance which is recorded. Furthermore, our children have been part of the Manchester network choir which also performs publicly, including at The Northern Royal College of Music. This has not taken place since COVID but will be coming back soon! Our children’s cultural capital is further enhanced through our school choir and singing assemblies. Singing assemblies include songs from rock, pop artists from the 1950s through to the present day as well as songs for religious celebrations. The choir and the singing assemblies are led by me, the music leader, and I am also a semi-professional musician. The school choir assists singing assemblies and also perform in school at The Winter fayre and church.