Wood Ley Community Primary School

Music

Here at Wood Ley CP School, we love music! We enjoy celebrating with music as a whole school community. In 2019, the whole school took part in writing a new school song with Jake and Adam from Band Academy. Each class, from Foundation to UKS2, wrote a verse, chorus or the middle eight. We recorded our singing and enjoyed being pop stars for the day! We hope that you enjoy the videos of some of our whole school activities! Year 3 have recently been involved in a community project, which includes lots of schools in the area. They had to write a song with the theme of ‘Tomorrow’. We had a professional musician from Norwich supporting the children with composition and lyric writing. Here is a link to the celebration of the project: Jubilant! Festival 2023 (youtube.com)

Music Development Summary

Aims and objectives

Music is a unique way of communicating that can inspire and motivate children. It is a vehicle for personal expression, and it can play an important part in the personal development of people. Music reflects the culture and society we live in, and so the teaching and learning of music enable children to better understand the world that they live in. Besides being a creative and enjoyable activity, music can also be a highly academic and demanding subject. It also plays an important part in helping children to feel part of a community. We provide opportunities for all children to create, play, perform and enjoy music, to develop the skills, to appreciate a wide variety of musical forms, and to begin to make judgements about the quality of music.

Our objectives in the teaching of music are:

to explore how sounds are made, and can be organised into musical structures;
to show how music is produced by a variety of instruments;
to teach how music is composed and written down;
to examine the relevance of when, where and why a given piece of music was written;
to develop the interrelated skills of composition, performance and appreciation.

Teaching and learning style

At Wood Ley Community Primary School, we make music an enjoyable learning experience. We encourage children to participate in a variety of musical experiences through which we aim to build up the confidence of all children. Singing lies at the heart of good music teaching. Our teaching focuses on developing the children’s ability to sing in tune and with other people. Through singing songs, children learn about the structure and organisation of music. We teach them to listen to and appreciate different forms of music. As children get older, we expect them to maintain their concentration for longer, and to listen to more extended pieces of music. Children develop descriptive skills in music lessons when learning about how music can represent feelings and emotions. Children are encouraged to use the correct vocabulary when discussing music. We teach them the skills of recognising pulse, pitch, rhythm and tempo. We often teach these together. We also teach children to make music together (learning how to use their voices / play unturned and tuned percussion instruments with control), to understand basic musical notation, and to compose pieces.

We recognise that in all classes, children have a wide range of musical ability, and so we seek to provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child. We achieve this in a variety of ways:

setting tasks which are open-ended and can have a variety of responses;
setting tasks of increasing difficulty (not all children complete all tasks);
providing resources of different complexity;
providing specialist support/encouragement where individual children have particular gifts or talents.

Recorder / glockenspiel tuition is provided as part of a music units of work in Years 3 and 4 and ukulele tuition is provided in years 5 and 6.

Additional music teaching

In addition to this KS2 children are offered the opportunity to study a musical instrument (guitar) and from Year 2 upwards, children are invited to join the school choir.

Music curriculum planning

Music is a foundation subject in the National Curriculum. Our school uses the national scheme of work for music as the basis for its curriculum planning. We have adapted the national scheme so that the topics that the children study in music build upon prior learning. While there are opportunities for children of all abilities to develop their skills and knowledge in each teaching unit, the progression planned into the scheme of work means that the children are increasingly challenged as they move through the school. This progression has three aspects:

increasing breadth and range of musical experiences;
increasing challenge and difficulty in musical activities;
increasing confidence, sensitivity and creativity in the children’s music-making.

The planning is based on QCA schemes of work, the Music Express scheme and the online Charanga scheme with activities linking to topics where appropriate. In addition to this, some units are planned by the subject leader.

The Early Years Foundation Stage

We teach music in EYFS as an integral part of the topic work covered during the year. We relate the musical aspects of the children’s work to the objectives set out in the Early Learning Goals (ELGs) which underpin the curriculum planning for children aged three to five. Music contributes to a child’s personal and social development. Counting and phonic songs foster a child’s mathematical and literacy ability, and songs from different cultures increase a child’s knowledge and understanding of the world; contributing to their social, moral, spiritual and cultural development.

Foundation stage use ‘Music Express’ to support their music curriculum; this closely follows the EYFS early learning goals.

By the end of Reception, children will have had the opportunity to explore musicality in a variety of ways; through teacher led and child initiated learning. They will: