Carlton Hill Primary School

Music rationale

“Children use music to help maintain emotional and social well-being and celebrate culture and community in ways which involve entertaining or understanding themselves and making sense of the world around them. Children should develop their understanding, make musical judgements, apply their new learning, develop their aural memory, express themselves physically, emotionally and through discussion and create their own musical ideas.” Burnard and Murphy, 2017

Music in our own words

Why do we learn music at Carlton Hill Primary School? We say: “Enjoying music, playing music and singing grows our self-confidence and creativity.”

A balanced music curriculum enables children to develop their musical creativity through practical and exploratory opportunities. Children develop as performers, song makers, composers, improvisers and listeners. Through deliberate practice, children become fluent in their knowledge of music. As they move through school, children also develop an increasing understanding of the history of music, learning about music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians.

Music promotes diversity and is used to express the children’s personal, emotional, social and cultural identity. Children not only learn about music but they will develop a love of music, becoming musicians who are able to share and perform using their new knowledge.

How is our music curriculum organised?

We use the music scheme ‘Charanga’. This scheme allows for the interrelated dimensions of music to weave through musical units and encourage the development of musical knowledge and skills. Children build their knowledge and capabilities of listening and appraising, understanding different musical activities and performance.

At the beginning of each unit, children have the opportunity to demonstrate prior knowledge including connected knowledge. We teach a balanced curriculum that is sequenced appropriately in order to build on and develop the knowledge and skills required to secure children understanding of music. Children have opportunities to recall their musical knowledge and skills and demonstrate their understanding through performance.

Creativity in music

“Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. A high quality music education should engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement.” National Curriculum, 2013

Music is a highly creative subject where children develop their own musical ideas. Creativity in music is encouraged through children’s improvisations and compositions when singing and playing instruments. They make connections between ‘new’ and ‘old’ learning, solve problems and think critically to develop and improve their ideas.

What is the impact of our music curriculum?

Each unit of music has an ongoing musical learning focus and a unit specific focus. Ongoing musical learning includes building on children’s prior knowledge to develop new knowledge about how they can improve their skills in listening and appraising, musical activities (games, singing, playing, improvising and composing, and performing. Unit specific knowledge focuses on musical skills and concepts that may be discrete to a particular style or styles of music relevant to the unit.

During music lessons and through recalls, assessments are made focusing on the content and performance involving qualitative verbal feedback. Learning is digitally recorded when appropriate. In addition, low stakes quizzes give children the opportunity to demonstrate connected knowledge held in the long term memory but also identify any misconceptions which the children may have. These can then be addressed immediately.