Blackfell Primary School

Music

Intent

Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon. (The National Curriculum)

Music teaching at Blackfell Primary School aims to follow the requirements of the National Curriculum; providing a broad, balanced and differentiated curriculum and ensuring the progressive development of musical concepts, knowledge and skills. At Blackfell Primary School we recognise that music plays an important part in helping children to feel part of a community and so we provide opportunities for all children to create, play, perform and enjoy music both in class and to an audience. Through assemblies, concerts, virtual concerts and key stage performances children are able to express their emotions and showcase their understanding of how to perform with awareness of others. Lessons enable children to develop their skills, appreciate a wide variety of musical forms, and begin to make judgements about the quality of music.

The aims of our Music curriculum:

Enjoy and have an appreciation for music.
Listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions.
Listen to and evaluate the work of great composers.
Sing and use their voices to create different effects.
Create and compose music, both on their own and with others.
Use a range of musical language.
Make judgements and express personal preferences about the quality and style of music.
Have opportunities to play a wide variety of instruments, both un-tuned and tuned.
Use technology if appropriate.
Take part in performances with an awareness of audience.

Special Educational Needs Disability (SEND)/ Pupil Premium/ High Attainers

All children will have Quality First Teaching. Any children with identified SEND or in receipt of pupil premium funding may have work additional to and different from their peers in order to access the curriculum dependent upon their needs. As well as this, our school offers a demanding and varied curriculum, providing children with a range of opportunities in order for them to reach their full potential and consistently achieve highly from their starting points.

Implementation

Music teaching at Blackfell Primary School delivers the requirements of the National Curriculum, and teachers plan lessons using our bespoke Blackfell Scheme of Work and the Charanga scheme of work. Music lessons are broken down into termly units and an emphasis is placed on musical vocabulary, allowing children to talk about pieces of music using the correct terminology. Across the summer term, children listen and appraise local artists. This allows for progression of skills and adds breadth and variety to lessons.

Each unit of work has an on-going musical learning focus and lessons usually follow a specific learning sequence:

Listen and Appraise
Musical Activities (including pulse and rhythm)
Singing and Voice
Playing instruments
Improvisation / Composition
Perform and Share

Our progression model also follows the same learning sequence to ensure all interrelated elements of music are covered and implemented.

Music teaching at Blackfell Primary School is practical and engaging. A variety of teaching approaches and activities are provided based on teacher judgement and pupil ability. Lessons typically involve a combination of the following; games, songs, challenges, listening to music and discussing music, playing a range of musical instruments, performing back, finding the pulse and composing music using notation sheets or technology. Open ended tasks are provided that can have a variety of responses and teachers also differentiate activities using the Charanga Bronze, Silver and Gold challenges. Our mastery curriculum provides further enrichment opportunities throughout the year (see below) for children who show extensive aptitude in music.

Performance is at the heart of musical teaching and learning at Blackfell Primary School and all pupils participate in a key stage performance. Pupils also take part in Harvest assemblies, singing assemblies and pupils from across school, singing festivals, virtual Christmas Concerts, end of unit performances, class performances and choir. Pupils who are confident are also encouraged to perform in solo performances. Parents are invited and welcomed to watch all of these performances whether at school or outside of school.

At Blackfell Primary School music teaching provides our pupils with an understanding and appreciation for music, by studying a wide range of musical styles and genres from a range of musical periods. Each class also study a local artist throughout the year to help broaden their appreciation and understanding of musical history. An example of the artists studied are as follows:-

Year 1-Light House Family
Year 2-Jimmy Nail
Year 3-Emeli Sande
Year 4-Bryan Ferry
Year 5-Sting
Year 6-Futureheads

Alongside our curriculum provision for music, pupils also have the opportunity to participate in additional 1:1 music teaching by being offered the opportunity to learn a musical instrument with peripatetic teachers. Our peripatetic music teaching is organised by Sunderland Music Hub. Instruments in the past have included: guitar and drums. Pupils that learn a musical instrument have the opportunity to sit examinations and perform at our carol concert and assemblies.

At Blackfell Primary School we also recognise that staff have musical abilities that can be utilised to supplement our musical curriculum. We provide opportunities for all pupils to learn a musical instrument should they wish to. To date these have been learning either the drums or guitar, and are offered for free to KS2 children to encourage participation and ensure disadvantaged pupils have the same opportunities has their peers.

Impact:

Our music Curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression and build on and embed current skills. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills in the different musical components and like in other subjects, discreet teaching of vocabulary also forms part of the units of work.

If children are achieving the knowledge and skills within lessons, then they are deemed to be making good or better progress.

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

Pupil discussions and interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
Governor monitoring with our subject music link governor.
Moderation staff meetings with opportunities for dialogue between teachers.
Annual reporting and tracking of standards across the curriculum.
Photo evidence and images of the pupils practical learning.
Video analysis through recording of performance in lessons.
A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes.
Dedicated music leader time.

The impact of our music curriculum is also measured in the uptake of our music after school clubs and uptake of additional music 1:1 teaching. In addition to this, we also measure the impact of the class composers and routinely ask children about their composer/style of music they are learning.

Mrs. Milne

September 2024