Curriculum – Music

Subject Leader – Mrs C Wootten

Our pupils’ backgrounds, our culture and our climate for learning provide the following drivers that underpin our curriculum and our vision and weave through all that we do.

• Catholic values – which helps pupils grow spiritually and give them values for life outside of school
• Historic Environment – which helps pupils to understand and appreciate their locality which facilitates their relationship to the wider world
• Resilience – which helps pupils grow as learners
• Independence – which helps pupils to grow as independent learners, not dependent on adults to learn
• Subject knowledge and skills – which help pupils develop their knowledge and skills and give them knowledge for life
• Tolerance – respecting and valuing the beliefs, values, choices and opinions of others

Music Intent 

In music, we want the children at St. Michael’s school to experience a curriculum which gives them success, knowledge, skills and vocabulary. We want our children to be confident in their music knowledge and enjoy a range of music throughout their time at St. Michael’s.

Our music curriculum will ensure children will:

• Develop their understanding and use of musical vocabulary
• Gain a good understanding of the inter-related dimensions of music
• Be able to listen to and respond to a range of different music
• Develop musical skills of singing, performing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, improvising and composing
• Become experts in singing through music sessions, performing and through exposure to hymns during collective worships.
• Develop their sense of identity by exploring music through history and contemporary music.
• Enjoy music from different countries and cultures.
• Be able to reflect on what they do and don’t enjoy through being exposed to a range of music styles, genres and eras.

At St. Michael’s we want children to experience the joy and wonder music can bring. We aim to do this by incorporating music into many aspects of our day, as well as our music lessons. We listen to music to help us reflect and wonder in collective worship. We also use music to celebrate experiences and achievements in class and during celebration assembly.

Implementation

At St. Michael’s, music is taught weekly by the class teacher. We use our music progression document, supported by the online tool Kapow to ensure the national curriculum for music is delivered in each year group. We feel that using the Kapow music scheme to support music teaching, ensures our music curriculum is being delivered sequentially and confidently.

Through the use of Kapow, our music curriculum takes a holistic approach to teaching music. The elements of music are woven together within each topic, allowing children to revisit and practise musical skills in a range of ways. The elements of music we focus on are as follows:

• Performing
• Listening
• Composing
• The inter-related dimensions of music
• The History of Music (KS2)

Music learning is recorded in floor books for each class through photos and comments.

We also provide space and time for children working with Durham Music Service, learning their own instruments. We ensure these children have opportunities to perform their music to the school or their class throughout the year.

Knowledge Mats

We use knowledge mats to help our children learn more about the topic; the vocabulary and the sticky knowledge we want them to remember.

Class 1
Under The Sea
Timbre And Rhythm
Pitch And Tempo
Vocal and Body Sounds

Class 2
Musical Me
On This Island
Music – Myths and Legends

Class 3
Composition
Vikings
Chinese New Year

Jazz

India

Class 4
Rock-And-Roll
Composition Mountains

Singing

Jazz

Class 5
Composition Notation
Creating Compositions
The Blues

Singing

Music-Jazz

 

Class 6
Songs of World War 2
Creating Compositions

Singing

Music – Jazz

Impact

• Children will enjoy listening to and creating music
• Children will make good progress in music
• Children will be able to know more, remember more and do more in music
• Children have a positive start to their music journey through exploration and exposure in EYFS
• Children will be able to use music vocabulary to talk about elements of music they listen to and create
• Children will be able to compose and improvise music with their voice and instruments
• Children will be confident performers independently or in a group
• Children will be able to talk about music from a range of cultures and periods of time
• Children will be developing as musicians in their own right and exploring their preferences to a range of music styles, genres and eras.

Whole School Music Overview
	EYFS	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5	Year 6
Autumn 1	Music Exploration and baseline	Pulse and Rhythm – All About Me	African Call and Response Song – Animals	Ballads	Body and tuned percussion – Rainforests	South and West Africa	Advanced rhythms
Autumn 2   Christmas Play and carol concert – fewer music lessons	Celebration Music         Christmas Carols	Classical Music, dynamics and tempo – Animals   Christmas Carols	Orchestral instruments – traditional stories   Christmas Carols	Creating compositions in response to an animation – Mountains   Christmas Carols	Rock and Roll   Christmas Carols	Composition notation – Ancient Egypt   Christmas Carols	Dynamics, pitch and tempo – Fingal’s cave   Christmas Carols
Spring 1	Exploring Sound	Musical Vocabulary – Under the Sea	Musical me	Developing singing technique – Vikings	Changes in pitch, tempo and dynamics – Rivers	Blues	Songs of WW2
Spring 2	Music and Movement	Timbre and rhythmic patterns – fairytales	Dynamics, timbre, tempo and motifs – Space	Pentatonic melodies and compositions – Chinese new year	Haiku, music and performance – Hanami	Composition to represent the festival of colour – Holi festival	Film music
Summer 1	Musical Stories	Pitch and tempo – superheroes	On this island – British songs and sounds	Jazz	Samba and carnival sounds and instruments	Looping and remixing	Theme and variations – Pop art
Summer 2	Big Band	Vocal and body sounds – by the sea	Myths and legends	Traditional instruments and improvisation – India	Adapting and transposing motifs – Romans	Musical theatre	Composing and performing a leavers’ song

Long Term Overview for KS2 Music
In St Michaels school we began teaching music using the Kapow scheme of work in Autumn 2 of 2021. The decision to move from Charanga to Kapow has been based upon the confidence of staff delivering music. We have found that the Kapow scheme of work offers more guidance and structure, allowing staff to deliver music lessons more confidently and ensuring progress for all.
LTO 2021-2022  As this is our first year delivering this scheme, Year 4 – Year 6 will cover the same topics to introduce children to the composition skills and vocabulary needed to access music.
Year 4  Year 5   Year 6				Creating compositions in response to an animation – Mountains  (Y3 topic 2)	Developing singing technique – Vikings  (Y3 topic 3)	Pentatonic melodies and compositions – Chinese new year  (Y3 topic 4)
LTO 2022 – 2023  As 2021 was our first year of delivering the Kapow scheme, Year 5 – Year 6 will cover the same topics to introduce children to the composition skills and vocabulary needed to access music.
Year 4	Body and tuned percussion – Rainforests	Rock and Roll	Changes in pitch, tempo and dynamics – Rivers	Haiku, music and performance – Hanami	Samba and carnival sounds and instruments	Adapting and transposing motifs – Romans
Year 5  Year 6	Jazz   (Y3 topic 5)	Traditional instruments and improvisation – India  (Y3 topic 6)	Body and tuned percussion – Rainforests  (Y4 topic 1)	Rock and Roll  (Y4 topic 2)	Changes in pitch, tempo and dynamics – Rivers  (Y4 topic 3)	Haiku, music and performance – Hanami  (Y4 topic 4)
LTO 2023 – 2024   As 2021 was our first year delivering the Kapow scheme – Year 6 will continue their music coverage from Year 4 lesson focuses.
Year 4	Body and tuned percussion – Rainforests	Rock and Roll	Changes in pitch, tempo and dynamics – Rivers	Haiku, music and performance – Hanami	Samba and carnival sounds and instruments	Adapting and transposing motifs – Romans
Year 5	South and West Africa	Composition notation – Ancient Egypt	Blues	Composition to represent the festival of colour – Holi festival	Looping and remixing	Musical theatre
Year 6	Samba and carnival sounds and instruments  (Y4 topic 5)	Adapting and transposing motifs – Romans  (Y4 topic 6)	South and West Africa  (Y5 topic 1)	Composition notation – Ancient Egypt  (Y5 topic 2)	Blues  (Y5 topic 2)	Composition to represent the festival of colour – Holi festival  (Y5 topic 3)

 

To find out more about music in school please have a look at our Music Progression Document

and Music Sequence of learning.