Music
Why is Music important?
Music is a powerful universal language which promotes unity and celebrates difference. It enables us to process and express our emotions and fuels our imagination. Music is important in developing individual skill, discipline, focus and memory. Whether we are singing, playing, composing, improvising or listening; we know we develop our aural discrimination through Music. In our KS2 classes we develop the skills of understanding and using notation or graphic scores to write or read our own music. Singing songs, nursery rhymes, chanting and listening to the environmental sounds is a brilliant starting point in our EYFS and underpins elements of our listening and understanding. We want to remind our pupils of the history of Music and allow them to appreciate music drawn from different cultures and traditions.
When is Music taught?
Music is taught on a Monday by our specialist teacher Sam Morris; Sam is a performance artist and an experienced music teacher. Sam uses the Sing Up scheme and adapts these for the needs of our children. Sing Up's primary music curriculum supports our staff to deliver high-quality classroom music right across school. All resources have a creative and active musical approach to lessons, connecting singing and playing, composing and improvising, listening and appraising. Sing Up Music is accessible for all and meets the requirements of the National Curriculum for Music and approaches of the Model Music Curriculum. We are unable to share copies of the lesson plans or topic overviews on our website due to the scheme being copyrighted but planning is available upon request.
Our Y3, Y4 and Y5 children also enjoy weekly singing and choral practice with John Barton. John is the Diocesan director of Music for Shrewsbury diocese and he will support our pupils to develop a love of singing through whole class tuition. This improve children's confidence and capacity to sing aloud as well as learning the power of singing within our collective worship.
What is the key vocabulary we use in Music?
- Pulse/beat: like a heartbeat, a steady beat underlying the music
- Rhythm: pattern of sound
- Pitch: high sounds, low sounds
- Structure: how a piece of music/song is built up, eg verse-chorus-verse-chorus Dynamics: loud, quiet, getting louder, getting quieter
- Timbre: the character of a sound, eg smooth sound, spiky sound, scratchy sound
- Texture: layers in the music, eg one sound or several sounds
- Tempo: speed
- Melodic shape: this is a little like the outline of the song or piece of music, picture a line that goes up steeply when the melody suddenly jumps to a much higher sound, or that goes down slowly when the melody gently falls. This “line” gives the contour or shape of the melodic line
- Genre: the type of music, eg pop, jazz, folk, classical
The Whole School Overview below maps out when each Music unit is taught:
How is the Subject Content from the National Curriculum Covered?
National Curriculum Coverage.
Key stage 1
Pupils should be taught to:
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use their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes
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play tuned and untuned instruments musically
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listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded
music
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experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the inter-related dimensions of music.
Key stage 2
Pupils should be taught to:
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play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and playing musical instruments with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression
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improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the inter-related dimensions of music
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listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory
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use and understand staff and other musical notations
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appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians
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develop an understanding of the history of music.