Music
Aim
At Snapethorpe, we believe Music is a universal language of creativity. We are aware of the impact that music can have on a child’s life and that a high-quality music education should engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians. Music increases self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement, improving mental health and even helping to maintain concentration.
Children will develop the musical skills of singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, improvising and composing music and listening and responding to music. They will develop an understanding of the history and cultural context of the music that they listen to and learn how music can be written down and represented in different ways. Music at Snapethorpe, is taught through a scheme called Kapow. We have chosen to follow this scheme in order to ensure that music teaching is both consistent and in-depth across school. The units are outlined on our whole school coverage documents and half termly newsletters.
Implementation
Our music curriculum bases each unit around 5 strands that are woven together to create engaging and enriching learning experiences:
- Performing
- Listening
- Composing
- The history of music
- The interrelated dimensions of music
Each five-lesson unit combines these strands within a cross-curricular topic, designed to capture pupils’ imagination and encourage them to explore music enthusiastically. As the children progress, they will be taught to sing fluently and expressively and play tuned and untuned instruments with accuracy and control. They will learn to recognise and name the interrelated dimensions of music - pitch, duration, tempo, timbre, structure, texture and dynamics - and use these expressively in their own improvisations and compositions. We teach and return to each of these throughout the children’s music education, to develop and secure their understanding and continue to build their skills.
As well as teaching music as a stand-alone subject once a week, we try to integrate it into many other areas of school life. For example, calming music is often playing in classroom and assemblies as the children walk in, to prepare them for the day ahead. Children in key stage 2 also have the opportunity to join the school choir. The choir is invited on a yearly basis to perform at the Christingle held at our local church St George’s as well as other concerts within school which parents are invited to. We also offer the opportunity for small group instrumental tuition in guitar, strings and piano. Children across Key Stage 2 are given this opportunity every year. Specialist teachers deliver these sessions once a week and instruments are loaned to children throughout the duration of their lessons. Our Year 3 children benefit from receiving their music lessons from a specialist music teacher. These children have the opportunity develop their music skills further and to learn to play the ukulele.
Impact
Last year we introduced our new scheme and this provided our children with this range of musical lessons and experiences which develops progressively and embeds musical knowledge. This year we will be developing the teaching and learning of music to ensure that our children are able to:
- Become confident performers, composers and listeners and will be able to express themselves musically,
- Develop an understanding of the ways in which music can be written down to support performing and composing
- Demonstrate and articulate an enthusiasm for music using the correct musical vocabulary to explain their thoughts
- Meet the end of key stage expectations outlined in the National Curriculum.
To support the teaching and learning of music we aim to develop a clear, simple assessment system which allows the children to identify their own learning and for staff to identify next steps. This will hopefully support the children to be involved in the development of their learning in music.
Below you can find the whole school overview for the Music coverage per year group and the medium term plans for each unit alongside Year 3's coverage from Wakefield's Music Service.
To find further information relating to learning in individual year groups, please use the year group tabs on the website homepage.
