Music

Our children develop their knowledge and skills through curriculum planning based on the requirements of the National Curriculum for Music. A music specialist teacher teaches in each class every week. Planning is carefully designed to be coherent and accessible, to enable children to make clear links with, and build on, prior learning and life experiences. We aim for our children to gain a good picture of musical genres from the world around them.

They develop knowledge and understanding of music from different cultures, environments and places.

language development

We aim for our children to talk like musicians. We are ambitious in the vocabulary we teach them. We teach key vocabulary, as outlined on medium term planning, relating to the topic. This will be revisited and built upon in subsequent topics. The children learn to use musical vocabulary in order to express their thoughts and ideas, within the context of the topic they are learning, in order to communicate musical information.

learning behaviours

We aim to actively foster our children’s intrinsic interest in, and enthusiasm for Music. We understand that children love singing and playing instruments. They show real excitement about singing together in music assemblies. We recognise that this engagement fosters positive learning behaviours and builds a sense of community and awe.

We know that the children like having the opportunity to share and collaborate: exploring new instruments, playing together and composing music in small groups.

physical activity

The children are active learners in music; they play musical instruments, sing songs with actions and respond to music through movement and dance. They make musical instruments such as shakers, guitars, drums.

We aim to foster practical engagement throughout the music curriculum, because we know this enables our children to make good mental musical pictures, in order to remember what they’ve learnt.

cultural capital

We recognise that our children come with diverse experiences of the world, and the local area they live in. Our curriculum design in music recognises and builds on this. Music needs to be relevant to, and have resonance with, all our children. They need to develop their understanding of the world around them and their music knowledge, building on and making connections with the music they are already familiar with. In order to do this, our curriculum covers a wide range of musical styles from different parts of the world.

They experience workshops and visitors in school, such as djembe drumming workshop for Black History month and in an after school club, every week. Children develop as confident performers through the numerous performance opportunities across the year such as the Year 1 seasonal performance, year 2 Show in July, the Harvest Festival and the Reception Show.

creative curriculum design and progression

Planning is carefully designed to be creative, coherent and accessible. This enables children to make clear links with, and build on, prior learning experiences, and to accumulate sufficient knowledge for future learning. The music units of work are intertwined with the school curriculum, enabling the children to make cross curriculum links. Units are well-matched to meet the context of the children and have clear end points, supporting teachers to make explicit what is needed for pupils to reach these. Each lesson is deliberately constructed and resourced to ensure ‘in-built’ progression of knowledge and skills. Lunchtime music clubs, such as choir, ukulele and recorders, give children opportunities to embed and further develop their skills. This purposeful approach develops curiosity and higher order thinking, and is designed and delivered to enable pupils to transfer key knowledge to long-term memory.

If you were to walk into a Music lesson at Garden Suburb infant School, you would see:

All children engaged and enthusiastic to gain musical knowledge.
Children who can work independently, and are also consistently co-operative and kind; they take turns and discuss their learning
Children using subject specific vocabulary, appropriate to their age and stage of development, with understanding and confidence
A sharp focus on learning to play musical instruments embedded in lessons.
A specialist music teacher and class teachers demonstrating secure subject knowledge, teaching lessons which are explicitly adapted to be both ambitious and to meet the needs of pupils with Special Educational Needs.
Teachers and support staff presenting information clearly, and encouraging appropriate discussion to learn key concepts.
Teachers and support staff helping children embed and use knowledge.
A powerful and enthusiastic learning environment, which develops children’s love for music and encourage their creativity.
Children reading and memorising lyrics to songs, developing new vocabulary that is both specific to Music and supports cross-curricular learning.

Click on the document at the bottom of the page, so see how our Curriculum Intent in Music relates to our whole school Curriculum Intent.