Music
Intent
Our primary music curriculum equips children with musical knowledge and skills, to inspire them to have a lifelong love, appreciation and curiosity for music.
Whilst at Hopton, children will be equipped with the following skills:
- Singing, playing, improvising and composing
- Appraising and developing an appreciation of music from a range of times and cultures.
- Expressing themselves creatively through music making and developing self-esteem through musical achievement
- Taking part in musical events and performances that contribute to the life of the school and wider community
- Experiencing the benefits that music has to their wellbeing
Implementation
At Hopton C of E Primary Academy, we use Charanga’s Model Music Curriculum scheme for our weekly music lessons in KS1 and KS2. Charanga follows a spiral approach to learning, where children revisit, build and extend their knowledge and skills. This enables them to consolidate their musical learning and increases confidence. This scheme is adapted and tailored to meet the needs of the learners and teachers use the ‘I do, we do, you do’ approach where learning is first modelled, then children have guided practice followed by independent application.
In EYFS, we follow the Early Excellence approach and provide a rich and enabling environment to encourage and enable musical learning through children’s play experiences. Music is also interwoven into activities such as story time and nursery rhymes.
By the end of KS1, children will be able to use their voices expressively in songs and chants, play instruments musically, experiment with sounds and listen with concentration to a range of music.
At the end of KS2, pupils will have built on their skills from KS1. They will sing and play musically with increasing confidence and control. Children will have developed an understanding of musical composition and manipulating ideas within musical structures and reproducing sounds from aural memory. These outcomes are taken from the Music Curriculum.
Singing is an integral part of school life at Hopton. Each day in Collective Worship, children sing songs linked to our school value of the term and there is a weekly singing assembly where there is additional time to learn and rehearse songs ready for whole school events such as church services and community performances.
Our school choir meet weekly, preparing songs for a range of performance opportunities.
We have enrichment opportunities planned into the curriculum each year. These include:
- Church events, such as Harvest, Christingle and Easter services
- Leavers Assembly
- Christmas performances and carol singing
- Live musical performances
- Online theatre shows
- The choir singing within our local community in residential homes and at events such as The Christmas Fair and The Big Sing at Bury Cathedral
Impact
Learning is assessed each lesson by ongoing teacher observation, peer and self-evaluation. Pupils are given verbal feedback celebrating their successes and know their next steps in their learning. At the end of the year, teachers carefully consider the year group objectives and decide whether children have successfully met the criteria. A written assessment is recorded by teachers and shared with parents on an annual report.