Overall curriculum
An Daras has used latest pedagogy, research and understanding of local contextual needs to structure the curriculum design to ensure the growth of capable, mature children who exhibit a sustained curiosity for learning. The ‘lived values and experiences’ of pupils are determined by the individual school and should run through all operational elements of curriculum provision.
Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. 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, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon.
As a creative subject, music offers lifelong opportunities for the development of imagination, sensitivity, inventiveness, risk-taking and enjoyment. It enhances cognitive abilities, improves memory and fosters creativity. Engaging with music helps children develop fine motor skills and coordination, especially through playing instruments. Music also encourages emotional expression and resilience, offering an outlet for feelings and helping pupils build confidence. Furthermore it promotes social skills and teamwork through group performance and collaborative learning.
Overall music is a vital component enriching the lives of pupils in multiple and meaningful ways. The aims of the music curriculum are:
- to enable the child to enjoy and understand music and to appreciate it critically
- to develop the child’s openness to, awareness of and response to a wide range of musical genres
- to develop the child’s capacity to express ideas, feelings and experiences through music as an individual and in collaboration with others
- to enable the child to develop his/her musical potential and to experience the excitement and satisfaction of being actively engaged in musical creativity
- to nurture the child’s self-esteem and self-confidence through participation in musical performance
- to foster higher-order thinking and lifelong learning through the acquisition of musical knowledge, skills, concepts and values.
Pedagogy
Our Music curriculum focuses on developing our pupils through the acquisition of WISDOM, KNOWLEDGE and SKILLS. These have been selected because they ensure the whole development of the child will be prioritised, they enable pupils to meet the expectations of the National Curriculum 14 and have ambitions beyond the NC14.
Each theme has a set of curriculum tools which ensure it is fully embedded through the lived experiences of staff, children, and stakeholders. Impact scales will measure the effectiveness of curriculum provision on the growth of children within these three equally important themes.
Wisdom
Children’s wisdom is developed in the following ways:
- Taking part in listening and response activities which allow them to respond spiritually and emotionally to range of musical genres from a wide range of cultures and periods of time.
- Using composition opportunities to explore their creative identity.
- Through learning how to make positive contributions to group discussions and activities.
- Making real and informed choices about their musical creations and preferences.
Knowledge
Children’s knowledge is developed in the following ways:
- Listening to and discussing/responding to a wide range of musical sources.
- Using ICT to record and change music and compose and perform their own creations.
- Digging deeper into the listening curriculum to develop a broad knowledge of genres.
- With a mixture of individual, group, whole class and whole school recording and practical work.
- Using a range of tuned and untuned instruments to express themselves and demonstrate their understanding of the key learning criteria for their year group/key stage.
Capabilities
Children’s capabilities are developed in the following ways:
- Being given responsibilities for taking care of and organising how they use and share musical instruments and resources.
- Meeting with and talking to other individuals about their musical preferences and opinions in response to musical sources.
- Developing the skills and confidence to ask for help and advice when needed and to take steps to ‘unstick’ themselves wherever possible in their own learning.
- Developing the skills to understand and be in control of their emotions and behaviour.
- With a mixture of individual, group, whole class and whole school recording and practical work.
At Windmill Academy, we use the music scheme ‘Charanga’ to support the teaching of music. Teachers and pupils are able to access a wide diverse range of music through both time and place. The Charanga Scheme provide our teachers with week-by-week lessons for each year group in their school. Charanga supports all the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum for Music in England in full. It allows teachers within school to adapt the learning to suit the class needs and aids teachers to teach whole class instrument lessons.
Our Music curriculum covers the National Curriculum (2014) objectives. To achieve this, we use the Charanga scheme of learning – adapted specifically for our school context. Each year group is timetabled to follow Charanga modules which ensure a spiral, repeated coverage of the main themes of the music curriculum - ensuring that learners revisit the interrelated dimensions of music: pulse, voice, pitch and rhythm- building upon previous learning and skills.
The Non-Statutory Model Music Curriculum also informs our planning in music teaching and assessment. The Model Music Curriculum sits at the heart of the Governments agenda for the development of musical education. Its key aims are that:
- Pupils should receive a minimum of one hour of music teaching a week (this may take the form of several short sessions and include singing and musical activities in assemblies and cross curricula experiences) and we aim to meet this wherever possible through class teaching, access to First Access music teachers and Arts Council projects but some schemes or plans may be slightly below this aim or be taught in blocks.
- There should be access to both rhythmic and melodic instruments in Key Stages 1 and 2
In the four areas of the model music curriculum, each strand develops the following principles: Singing
Listening
Composing
Performing
Teachers will help pupils with SEND to overcome any barriers to participating and learning and make any ‘reasonable adjustments’ needed to include pupils. To make lessons inclusive, teachers will anticipate what barriers to taking part and learning may pose for pupils with SEND. Some modifications or adjustments will be made or smaller steps to achieve the learning goal. Occasionally, pupils with SEND will have to work on different activities, or towards different learning intentions, from their peers.
In EYFS, all areas of learning and development are important and inter-connected. These are stipulated in the ‘Statutory framework for the early years foundation stage’. The most relevant statements for music are taken from the following areas of learning:
- Communication and Language
- Physical Development Expressive
- Arts and Design
Music has links with history, dance, geography as well as SMSC, UNICEF Rights Respecting, and our school capabilities.
Assessment
Formative
Assessment is regarded as an integral part of teaching and learning and is a continuous process. All sessions should begin with a recap/recall of previous learning. Teachers should use skillful questioning to gauge starting points, to assess current understanding and knowledge, to ensure concepts have been acquired, to identify misconceptions. This formative assessment should support the teacher in adapting lessons to ensure pupils are learning new learning, building on prior learning and making links between new and previous learning. At the end of each session, teachers should use assessment tools to ensure that the intent of the lesson has been achieved, to help plan for the following session and to support building a picture of the pupils’ progress for final summative assessments.
Summative
It is the responsibility of the class teacher to assess all pupils in their class. Each child is assessed termly, against the criteria outlined in the Charanga units attached to each year group. At the beginning of each unit of work the teacher should ensure that a pre-unit recording of voice and instrumental progress is taken in order to compare with progress in the end of unit recording. Teachers must also use their class floor books to record other aspects of completed work such as: response to music, composition using written methods of recording musical intention (such as rhythm grids or other forms of more formal notation), pupil voice around their knowledge of genres and composers/song writers. This assessment may also be recorded and saved in a video format.
End of year assessment is reported on Itrack and features on the annual report to parents.
In EYFS, the level of development children should be expected to have attained by the end of the EYFS is defined by the early learning goals (ELGs). These are not used as a curriculum or in any way to limit the wide variety of rich experiences that are crucial to child development. Instead, the ELGs support teachers to make a holistic, best-fit judgement about a child’s development, and their readiness for year 1.
When assessing pupils with SEND, there will be carefully planned opportunities in order for them to demonstrate what they know and are able to do, using alternative means where necessary. Where a pupil is unable to use particular types of equipment, assessment of attainment will be based on understanding of the processes used as demonstrated through oral and written responses or, where possible, through the use of alternative equipment. The attainment of pupils who require adapted equipment, such as particular switches or voice-activated software, will be assessed using these specialist items.
The monitoring of the standards of children’s learning and the quality of learning and teaching of music is the shared responsibility of the Senior Leadership Team and the subject leader. The work of the subject leader also involves supporting colleagues in the teaching of music, being informed about current developments in the subject, and providing a strategic lead and direction for the subject in the school. A named member of the school governing body is briefed to overview the teaching of the curriculum in the school.
Culture
Music is an important contributor to the Trust ambition to develop the whole child through the acquisition of wisdom, knowledge and skills. Music is important because:
- It develops children’s self-awareness of their own culture and their understanding of that of other people.
- It encourages self-esteem and promotes well-being.
- It allows children to explore spiritual, social and cultural issues within a safe environment.
- It encourages listening, understanding, tolerance and respect of all individuals and the skills necessary to achieve positive, worthwhile relationships with others.
- It encourages pupils to work well with each other, giving positive feedback to each other and sensitive critique.
- Wider music projects give pupils the chance to work with other groups and schools and to understand their musical cultures and beliefs.
- Pupils are able to grow their own advocacy in musical and lyrical composition and share this with others.
At Windmill Academy, we believe that music is a vital part of the children’s education to enable them to express themselves through sound, to learn about the roots of genres of music and through a variety of styles through time. We aim to inspire and ignite a love for music, to listen to and appraise naturally in which these skills are promoted and discussed during the progressing lessons.
Alongside Charanga, Windmill strives to give the children opportunity to see live musicians perform. We have supported the Launceston Folk launch, The Pearl of Africa, Launceston Town band performance, Piano teacher performance and more during this coming year. We aim to have a variety of both voice and instruments as well as culture and a range of styles.
We aim to provide every pupil with the opportunity to learn a variety of instruments with the support from Cornwall’s music hub and utilising music specialists to give instrument lessons throughout the year e.g. Samba drumming, singing and string instruments. We believe that learning music will help benefit every pupil to listen and learn to analyses a variety of styles and composers both modern and through a variety of periods across the curriculum.
Pupils at Windmill Hill Academy are also given the opportunity to join in with in school, e.g. annual Christmas performances, and after school music and joining clubs that lead to performances within the community events. This includes: Samba band performances at the late night shopping in town or during Launceston Heritage days at the castle or school fete, song fest, trust music events. It gives the children a sense of belonging, building up to a performance, sense of accomplishment and giving back to the community.
Our role in school is to ensure that children are able to develop their relationship with music and learning instruments and are supported to reach their potential. We also have a role to ensure that children learn about the history of music and how to read basic notation, compose, improvise and control sound, appraise, evaluate and perform to an audience.
Teachers will help pupils with SEND to overcome any barriers to participating and learning and make any ‘reasonable adjustments’ needed to include pupils. To make lessons inclusive, teachers will anticipate what barriers to taking part and learning may pose for pupils with SEND. Some modifications or adjustments will be made or smaller steps to achieve the learning goal. Occasionally, pupils with SEND will have to work on different activities, or towards different learning intentions, from their peers. For some activities, there may need to be a ‘parallel’ activity for pupils with SEND, so that they can work towards the same learning intentions as their peers, but in a different way. The use of technology to assist learning can remove barrier and support with/adapted resources.
Systems
In EYFS, all areas of learning and development are important and inter-connected. These are stipulated in the ‘Statutory framework for the early years foundation stage’. The most relevant statements for music are taken from the following areas of learning:
- Communication and Language
- Physical Development
- Expressive Arts and Design
Reception
Communication and Language
- Listen carefully to rhymes and songs, paying attention to how they sound.
- Learn rhymes, poems and songs
Physical Development
- Combine different movements with ease and fluency.
Expressive Arts and Design
- Explore, use and refine a variety of artistic effects to express their ideas and feelings.
- Return to and build on their previous learning, refining ideas and developing their ability to represent them.
- Create collaboratively, sharing ideas, resources and skills.
- Listen attentively, move to and talk about music, expressing their feelings and responses.
- Sing in a group or on their own, increasingly matching the pitch and following the melody.
- Explore and engage in music making and dance, performing solo or in groups.
ELG
Expressive Arts and Design
Being Imaginative and Expressive
- Sing a range of well-known nursery rhymes and songs.
- Perform songs, rhymes, poems and stories with others, and (when appropriate) try to move in time with music.
The national curriculum for music aims to ensure that all pupils:
- perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians
- learn to sing and to use their voices, to create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, use technology appropriately and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence
- understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the inter-related dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.
The KS1 music curriculum states that pupils should be taught to:
- use their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes
- play tuned and untuned instruments musically
- listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music
- experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the inter related dimensions of music
The KS2 music curriculum states that pupils should be taught to:
- 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 for a range of purposes using the inter related 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
In Key Stage 2, children should be taught to sing and play musically with increasing confidence and control. They should understand musical composition, organising and manipulating ideas within musical structures and reproducing sounds from aural memory.
Musical notation
As discussed above, the curriculum for KS2 involves school students learning about musical notation (the way that songs are written down so players know the duration and pitch of the notes they are meant to play). Each note is worth a certain amount of beats. Here are some music note names to explore with your class members:
- Semibreve (whole note – four beats)
- Minim (half note – two beats)
- Crochet (quarter note – one beat)
- Quaver (eighth note – half a beat)
- Semiquaver (sixteenth note – quarter of a beat)
Windmill Hill Academy follows Cornwall Charanga music programme for music, which also allows teachers in school to tailor the programme to the needs of their pupils whilst still following statutory guidance.
By the end of each key stage, pupils are expected to know, apply and understand the skills and knowledge specified in the relevant programme of study.
See the knowledge and skills organiser for music which demonstrates the progression through the year groups.
Policies/key documents
- Whole School Long term horizontal curriculum map
- Charanga music scheme
- Music knowledge and Skills organiser
- Music skills progression
- EYFS Long term overview
- SEND Policy
All of these can be found on our website under the curriculum/policies tab.