Music

Intent

Our Music curriculum has been tailored to meet the unique context of our school. It is designed to be broad and balanced, providing all pupils with the opportunity to master their learning and deepen their knowledge, making sense and giving purpose to why we learn about the different styles, genres and pieces of music. Teachers will provide pupils with challenging vocabulary which will help to deepen their understanding and knowledge of musical notation and a range of tuned and untuned musical instruments.

We believe that music through the National Curriculum and lessons using ‘Sparkyard’ helps children to express themselves and to become confident performers in singing and in using instruments. The music curriculum allows pupils to gain appraisal skills of a range of genres of music along with compositional and listening skills. They are offered a range of opportunities to explore instruments and composers using a wide variety of musical styles. Children demonstrate an understanding of improvisation, experimenting with different rhythms, songs or pieces of music.

Children at Our Lady’s receive a wealth of musical opportunities within the local area of Manchester. We participate in the Sing Around and early years musical celebrations at many famous concert halls such as The Bridgewater Hall, Stoller Hall and The Royal Exchange. We also take part in the Irish musical celebration for St Patrick’s day. The school choir performs across the city also, we link up with the music department at Loreto College and perform alongside them at the RNCM and at Manchester Cathedral.

We aim to build high levels of competence in music through developing the skills of:

• Appraisal
• Performance
• Composition
• Improvisation
• Transcription and Description

Implementation

Statutory requirements for the teaching and learning of Music are laid out in the ‘Expressive Arts and Design’ section of the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (2021) and in the National Curriculum in England: Key Stages 1 and 2 (2014).  The principles, outcome and content of the requirements are placed at the heart of the schools’ programme of study in Music. 

Each class teacher follows and delivers the National Curriculum and teaches a range of skills to children using a variety of music genres and appraisal skills. Teachers plan and teach through the scheme Sparkyard. Through Sparkyard, children have opportunities to sing songs relevant to each subject taught in class. They sing songs about the daily routine, singing for pleasure, songs for well-being, social development and collective worship.

Our Year 4, 5 and 6 children have access to our steel pan lessons with a specialist teacher where over a term they learn to play a range of musical pieces and learn to hear a range of musical notes whilst reading musical notations. They carry out performances twice a year to demonstrate their musical skills. These children also showcase their talent at the summer fair and during Christmas concerts.

Each child from Nursery to Year 6 experience regular music lessons with instruments and singing. The children in Year 2 have Ukulele lessons weekly with a specialist teacher. Their skills obtained are continued throughout key stage 2 where they will progress onto the guitar. Though these lessons and in curriculum music, the children acquire knowledge and skills in notation – each child plays tuned (xylophone) and untuned (percussion) instruments.

Early Years children benefit from ‘Polkadot’ sessions where they learn how to play untuned percussion instruments and sing; gaining confidence of playing and listening at a young age, along with the knowledge of each instrument. 

In Music, assessment of pupil progress is taken against the age-related expectations for music. The outcomes of the assessments are used by class teachers to evaluate the quality of coverage of the ARE in music and to inform aspects of learning that need to be strengthened to improve the quality of provision and to enhance pupil progress. This includes assessing pieces of music composed by the children alongside their understanding of musical vocabulary and the range of tempos and pitches.

The children in key stage 2 are offered the chance to represent our school in our school choir. The choir perform at many events across the local community including a partnership Christmas carol service with our feeder high school, Loreto High. We also have an established link with the Loreto College Music Department. We are regularly invited to join them in their musical showcase concerts at the Royal Northern College of Music. The choir have also performed at Manchester Cathedral and in local retirement homes.

Impact

The Music curriculum is broad and balanced with a range of cross-curricular opportunities which allows pupils to become confident performers who have a good understanding of how music is composed and developed. The curriculum offers opportunities for children to enhance their musical vocabulary with a greater understanding of musical notation, number of beats and how to recognise the range of pitches, dynamics and tempos.

Pupils will be able to use their skills to compose their own music as well as take inspiration from different genres and musicians alongside music from different countries and cultures worldwide. They will use their communication skills and learn to transcribe and describe their feelings about a range of styles of music.

The expected impact of the music curriculum at Our Lady’s is that children will:

• Be confident performers, composers and listeners and will be able to express themselves musically at and beyond school.
• Show an appreciation and respect for a wide range of musical styles from around the world and will understand how music is influenced by the wider cultural, social and historical contexts in which it is developed.
• Understand the ways in which music can be written down to support performing and composing activities.
• Demonstrate and articulate an enthusiasm for music and be able to identify their own personal musical preferences.
• Meet the end of key stage expectations outlined in Development Matters and the National Curriculum for Music.