“Music can change the world.”

Ludwig van Beethoven

Intent

At Lydney C of E Primary School, the intention of our Music curriculum is to first and foremost encourage our students to feel that they are musical and to foster within each child a life-long love of music. We focus on developing the skills, knowledge and understanding that children need in order to become confident performers, composers, and listeners.

Throughout their education here at Lydney C of E School, 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.

Through music, our curriculum helps children develop transferable skills such as team-working, leadership, creative thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, and presentation and performance skills. These skills are vital to children’s development as learners and have a wider application in their general lives outside and beyond school. We follow Kapow Primary’s Music scheme of work, which enables pupils to meet the end of key stage attainment targets outlined in the national curriculum and the aims of the scheme align with those in the national curriculum.

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.

In order to meet the National Curriculum objectives, music is embedded throughout our curriculum here at Lydney C of E and takes the form of sequential music lessons alongside cross-curricular opportunities for music, regular singing practice both in class and whole school, opportunities to watch and listen to live performances and alike.

Implementation

At Lydney C of E School, we encourage a holistic approach to music following the Kapow Music Scheme, in which the individual strands below are woven together to create engaging and enriching learning experiences.

• Performing
• Listening
• Composing
• The history of music
• The inter-related dimensions of music

The design of our music curriculum is centred around capturing students’ imagination and encouraging them to explore music enthusiastically. Our chosen music units make cross-curricular links when it is possible and where it is meaningful to the topic in question. Over the course of the curriculum, children will be taught how to sing fluently and expressively, and play tuned and untuned instruments accurately and with 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.

Impact

The impact and measure of our music curriculum at Lydney C of E School is to ensure that our students are equipped with a range of skills to enable them to succeed in the next phase of their music education and for them to be able to enjoy and appreciate music throughout their lives.

Children will:

• Be confident performers, composers and listeners and will be able to express themselves musically at and beyond school.
• Show an appreciation and respect for a wide range of musical styles from around the world and will understand how music is influenced by the wider cultural, social, and historical contexts in which it is developed.
• Understand the ways in which music can be written down to support performing and composing activities.
• Demonstrate and articulate an enthusiasm for music and be able to identify their own personal musical preferences.
• Meet the end of key stage expectations outlined in the national curriculum for Music.