Music
Intent
At Woodlands we intend our music curriculum to give all children including those with SEND and vulnerable children the knowledge and skills they need ready for secondary school and for life.
We aim to give them the opportunity, the skills and the confidence to enable them to use music to communicate and explore emotion. We expose our children to a wide range of musicians, genres and styles so they can appreciate and appraise music whilst also feeling inspired to compose music themselves.
Our music curriculum ensures children sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate following the content and ambition of the National Curriculum. The curriculum is planned to build on prior learning and attain specific musical end points. We have adapted the curriculum to ensure musical terminology is taught through the whole school.
Implementation
Through evaluation & theory
• We will combine actions with new music vocabulary in order to given the children the confidence to use musical vocabulary regardless of ability, EAL or any other language barriers.
• We will expose our children to a musical canon of influential composers improving their knowledge and cultural capital by listening, discussing and engaging with their music.
• These composers are examples of artists who have used music as a way to cross boundaries of race, age, countries, religion and money.
• This musical canon will help foster a love of music and will allow children to make connections between musicians and form a timeline depicted the history of music.
• While listening to high quality live and recorded music our children are taught the vocabulary to discuss the music confidently and critically appraise. They can comment on such things as pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture and structure.
• We critically engage with the music, discussing the emotions being portrayed and/or what the music is attempting to communicate.
• These carefully chosen pieces are also used as a way for children to be taught and explore musical notation using their increasing aural memory to reproduce sounds with accuracy and control.
Through practical & performing
• We allow our children to explore and use a variety of untuned instruments
• In order for children to be able to communicate musically, we teach them the skills through a medium that will not be hindered by deprivation. Therefore we will primarily focus on the skills involved in singing. When learning a tuned instrument we have chosen to teach the ukulele for the same reasons.
• Through singing and instrumental tuition of both tuned and untuned instruments we will begin to use notation which provides our children with opportunities to explore pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure.
• We give our children opportunities to play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and playing musical instruments with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression
• As part of our extra-curricular program and to develop these skills further we offer additional guitar and violin lessons and a choir which will harness the skills already learnt when playing the ukulele and allow children opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence. While ensuring they have additional opportunities to perform.
Impact
For our children from their different starting points, all children will make good progress in music academically, emotionally, creatively and socially. Knowledge, understanding and skills will be secured and embedded so that children are able to achieve their potential and are fully prepared for secondary school. They will understand that music is a way to communicate, and will respectfully listen and explore music from different eras, cultures and genres – through this they will develop their knowledge and cultural capital and an understanding that with resilience they too can communicate through music irrespective of affluence, SEN, cultural heritage, religious belief or age. The musical canon they are exposed to should help foster a love for music and inspire the children in our care.
They will take pride in all that they do, always striving to do their best. They will demonstrate resilience and the ability to persevere when they encounter challenge. They will develop a sense of responsibility and pride through performance become confident in their own abilities. They will respect music in its own right and what it can provide holistically.