Music
At Adswood Primary School, we believe music embraces our individuality, creativity and most importantly, our self-expression. Music is shaped around our whole school intent as it encourages oracy, independence and gives our children rich experiences. Every child should have the opportunity to develop their musical potential and we aim to nurture this across the school. Our music curriculum is working within the national curriculum ensuring that every child has a music education and is exposed to the importance of music. We identified from pupil voice that our children are keen to learn how to play the keyboard and it is our vision to ensure all children learn how to read music and play the keyboard by the time they leave our school in Year 6.
The aims of music are :
- Children learn to sing and play musically with increasing confidence and control.
- Developed an understanding of musical composition, organising and manipulating ideas within musical structures and be able to reproduce sounds from aural memory.
- Be able to listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory
- Play a tune on a variety of instruments understanding staff and other musical notations.
- Be able to appreciate and understand a wide range of live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians
- Develop an understanding of the history of music.
Music Planning - including Visits, Visitors and Enrichment (VVE)
We use the Kapow programme throughout school. As lessons are taught, they are continually adapted to encourage progression of our pupils as well as the teaching needs of our teachers. We provide team-teaching and CPD training to help our teachers develop. The Year 5 and Year 6 cohort are taught music through Foundation 5 three afternoons a week by a music specialist.
As well as time tabled music lessons, we aim to provide our children with extra music opportunities. These include a choir visit to the Town Hall to perform 'Disney 100 years ', Halle orchestra visit to school to share their instruments, one to one guitar lessons, singing at the local church with other schools to name a few. We ensure cross curricular links are made where possible.
Progression and Continuity
The school uses a variety of teaching and learning styles in music lessons. We do this through a mixture of direct teaching and individual/ group activities. Teachers draw attention to good examples of individual performance as models for the other children. They encourage children to evaluate their own ideas and methods, and the work of others, to say what they think and feel about them. We give children the opportunity within lessons to work on their own and collaborate with others. Children also have the opportunity to use a rnage of musical instruments.We recognise the fact that we have children of differing ability in all our classes, and so we provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child. We achieve this through a range of strategies which are differentiated by task, expected outcome and/or support from peers or adults.
Progress and Achievement
Children are monitored on a regular basis to check progress. We encourage all children to take responsibility for their own learning. A range of Assessment for Learning strategies are used, for example peer feedback – the children are regularly encouraged to comment on each other’s work using vocabulary related to the skill taught, evaluation, self assessments, success criteria, the use of talk partners and end of unit teacher/pupil evaluation. Through these, both children and adults are able to recognise the progress being made. Our whole school tracking system is updated with teacher assessments each term to monitor childrens progress towards national expectations. Outcomes are showcased via the E Books.
Once children start to learn the basics of playing an instrument, they really enjoy playing it. Every song they learn is a personal achievement which supports children to develop a sense of pride and achievement. We hope the experiences we provide encourage our children on their musical journey and give them the opportunity to explore and develop their talents and interests. We aim to ignite a lifelong passion for music and ensure our children understand the value and importance of all types of musical styles. We also hope to see some of them as performers, rockers and musicians of the future!
