Music

As a result of school closures due to the recent pandemic, for the academic year 2021/22 we will be prioritsing the teaching of missed content to ensure that our pupils can make sense of work that comes later on in the curriculum, including key knowledge, skills, vocabulary and links between concepts. This forms part of the school's Recovery Curriculum.

A key priority in all key stages is a curriculum which allows return to practical music making through singing and playing instruments.

Close consideration is given to the order in which key components are taught or retaught so that these skills will be delivered deliberately and incrementally.

We will be ensuring that pupils can secure mastory of their instumental and singing skills and their knowledge of constructive elements such as scales, chordes and musical forms.

Welcome to Music at Gainsborough Primary and Nursery School!

INTENT

At Gainsborough we value music because it is a powerful and unique form of communication that can change and impact the way children feel, think and act. Exposing children to music during early development helps them to learn the sounds and meanings of words. Dancing to music helps children build motor skills while allowing them to practice self-expression. Our aim is that every child should gain a firm understanding of what music is through listening, singing, playing, evaluating, analysing and composing across a range of historical periods, styles, traditions and musical genres. We believe that every child should have the opportunity to develop their musical potential and we aim to nurture and encourage musical development across the school.

IMPLEMENTATION

The music curriculum at Gainsborough Primary and Nursery School is designed to cover the objectives in the National Curriculum and the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum and is linked to the cross-curricular themes covered in year groups, where appropriate. Through our music lessons, children are actively involved in a wide range of musical opportunities. Children develop their singing voices, using body percussion and whole body actions, and learn to play instruments effectively to create and express their own and others’ music. They are taught to understand how music is created, produced and communicated, with lessons focusing on pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.

Our curriculum ensures that children cover different elements of music, learn important vocabulary and develop a good understanding on how music has changed throughout history. In addition to this, all Year 4 pupils are taught by a specialist music teacher to play an instrument such as the violin or guitar.

Alongside our curriculum provision for music, pupils also have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument with peripatetic teachers. Our peripatetic music teaching is organised by the Local Education Authority’s ‘Music for Life’ and lessons are provided weekly for a small set fee paid by the child’s parent/carer. Lessons can include guitar, ukulele and piano. We also have a thriving school choir with children performing at school events and in assemblies as well as taking part in Young Voices, Crewe Out Loud and Sing Fest events. Each year, all pupils enjoy live performances from ‘Key Strings’ and the ‘Pop Project’, where they have the opportunity to learn about different instruments and musical styles in a fun, interactive and engaging way. Our annual Arts Week provides opportunities for pupils to explore and experiment with music from other cultures.

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 other subjects, discrete vocabulary progression also forms part of the units of work.

If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress. We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods: