Why teach music?

Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. A high-quality music education engages and inspires children to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As children progress, they develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and listen with discrimination.  Musical training can also help children to develop language and reasoning skills and can benefit their work in other curriculum areas.  Our team leader for music is Jacob Boulton and the link governor is Stacey Spittlehouse.

Aims

The National Curriculum for music aims to ensure that all children:

• perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of great composers and musicians
• learn to sing and 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: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations

Key Stage One

Children are taught to:

• use their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes
• play tuned and untuned instruments musically
• listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music
• experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the interrelated dimensions of music

Key Stage Two

Children are taught to:

• play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and playing musical instruments with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression
• improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the interrelated dimensions of music
• listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory
• use and understand staff and other musical notations
• appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians develop an understanding of the history of music