Aims and Intent

Music is a unique way of communication that can inspire and motivate children. It is a vehicle for personal expression and can also play an important part in helping children to feel part of a community, which they are then more likely to respect and care for. It is an incredibly inclusive subject, which provides opportunities for all children to create, play, perform and enjoy music, and to develop the skills to critically appreciate a wide variety of musical forms. In our school, music brings our communities together, through shared whole-school singing, ensemble playing, experimenting with creative processes, listening to others and feeling inspired to perform ourselves. The sheer joy of music making can feed the soul of a school community, enriching each student while strengthening the shared bonds of support and trust which make a great school. At St Mary’s we aim to develop a joy and appreciation for music and for being musicians.

Ultimately, we intend our children to be able to:

• 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.

Implementation

At St. Mary’s we follow the National Curriculum for Music, as well as the recent Model Music Curriculum, to ensure a well-structured approach to this creative subject. Continuity and progression are ensured by access to the CUSP scheme of work, which teachers follow to plan high- quality lessons, developing and progressing pupils’ skills across the year groups and key stages. We also have access to external peripatetic music teachers from the North Yorkshire Music Hub, which helps provide expertise and a wide range of opportunities for our pupils to learn to play a range of instruments.

Long, medium and short term planning for each year group will be progressive:

• All teachers plan lessons that include music skills from the National Curriculum and are explicitly taught and developed
• All teachers will use progressive planning within music lessons

Impact

We will measure the impact of our music curriculum at St. Mary’s through:

• The use of class floor books to ensure coverage and progression of musical skills, as well as for recording pupil responses
• Taking video or audio recordings of the pupils’ learning and performance skills and uploading these to our school shared drive to monitor the progression of skills
• The quality and standard of the pupils’ performances
• Pupils having the confidence to evaluate and analyse different forms of music, including that of others and their own
• Pupils having knowledge of musicians, and composers throughout history

Informal ongoing assessment by the Class teacher is used. Progression in skills documents are used to assess the work of the children against, particularly in the understanding and implementation of year-group specific vocabulary and skills. Feedback on improvisations, performances and compositions will be given verbally, with advice on how to improve offered ‘on the spot’. Our overarching aim, however, is not simply to provide evidence of coverage, but to enrich children with a Music curriculum that excites, motivates and inspires our pupils to become enthusiastic musicians with a wide range of skills.