Music
Intent
At Elmhurst Junior School our music curriculum echoes the National Curriculum that ‘music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity’. We believe that a high-quality music education should engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As pupils progress, we believe that they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination.
Implementation
At Elmhurst Junior School, we use the Charanga Music scheme of work to support our teaching of Music through Years 3-6. This scheme supports teachers to ensure our music teaching is delivered to a high standard and pupils are exposed to a range of musical genres and terminology, such as pitch, composition, structure and beat. Children build on their prior knowledge and skills through our carefully structured curriculum, ensuring that their understanding of music and musical terminology meet the attainment targets as stipulated in the National Curriculum:
- play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and playing musical instruments with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression
- improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the interrelated dimensions of music
- listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory
- use and understand staff and other musical notations
- appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians
- develop an understanding of the history of music
Lessons are taught weekly every other half term in six week blocks to ensure that children have time to fully consolidate their learning before progressing. Music knowledge organisers highlight the learning journey, key questions and vocabulary for each lesson so the learning intentions and outcomes are clear. Musical instruments / resources are provided for specific units of work, allowing teachers to support effective learning within the classroom.
Our music curriculum is further supported by Somerset Music teachers who provide clarinet lessons for all children in Year 4, as well as individual or small group clarinet and guitar lessons as part of our extra curricular activities programme. In addition, Millfield School continues to support our school with a wide range of musical enrichment activities.
Impact
End of unit class performances provide clear evidence of a broad and balanced music curriculum and demonstrates children’s acquisition of key knowledge from each unit of work. This alongside individual lesson outcomes, is used to inform teacher assessment and is used by the Music subject leader as part of the monitoring process. In addition, weekly celebration assemblies showcase a variety of Music activities and work completed across all year groups.
Key questions are planned into each unit of work for pupils to show progression of knowledge and understanding of key skills taught, through verbal and performance feedback. This allows teachers to assess pupils’ skills and knowledge throughout each unit.
Children are confident recalling key knowledge and vocabulary that have been learnt and are able to discuss aspects of the curriculum with enthusiasm in discussion with the Music subject leader. Children’s performances and knowledge organisers are used to guide discussion and provide the subject leader with the necessary information to measure how well the children are progressing in this subject area.
