Music

At Moordown St Johns, music plays an important part in whole school and class worship. Children are encouraged to join in with many musical opportunities that the school has to offer, developing and progressing their own musical knowledge and enjoyment. This is through class lessons and through opportunities to learn an instrument or to join a musical club.

Through music the children are able to develop creatively and this has an impact on many areas of their curriculum knowledge. It helps with developing good listening skills, the ability to communicate and express emotions, as well as by developing their musicianship. Children need to learn, develop and progress through a progressive music curriculum in order for them to become great musicians. Music at Moordown St Johns is also important and can help in supporting good wellbeing amongst all members of the school family.

Intent: What we expect children to learn 

Through the delivery of our music curriculum, the children will experience a range of musical styles, genres and elements within music.

By the end of their time at Moordown St Johns the children will have experienced a range of historical periods, genres and musical styles through the use of the music scheme Charanga and will have the opportunity of listening to and appraising different music. They will develop skills in appreciating how music is created being able to identify pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and simple musical notations.

Through varying opportunities the children will sing in a group or develop confidence of singing alone, developing skills within the use of their voice. They will use musical instruments to identify pulse and rhythm and also to develop musical skills and appreciation of using both tuned and un-tuned instruments. The children will also begin to develop early composition skills using percussion instruments or voice.

Implementation: How we teach the subject

Music is taught at Moordown St Johns through resources supported by our Music Hub Soundstorm, and also through the musical scheme Charanga. Children are taught music for 3 half terms a year and have opportunity to learn the theory, as well as practical elements of music. Through musical exploration, the children will blossom in their knowledge of the elements of music, as well as their appreciation and ability to listen to and appraise music of different styles and genres. Through Soundstorm there are also opportunities to have live performances enabling the children to listen to and appreciate different styles of live music.

Children will have an opportunity to learn the recorder in year 3, to develop the recorder and move to the clarinet in year 4 and will be able to transfer their gained musical knowledge to the ukulele in year 5.

By year 6 the children can take their musical journey and begin to learn an instrument of their choice through private peripatetic lessons should they wish to.

Opportunities will be given for children to perform in groups or as a solo in order to develop performance skills to others. Charanga enables children to have the important progressive music curriculum and to develop their musical skills throughout EYFS, KS1 and KS2.

Impact: How we evaluate the knowledge and skills they have learned  

Through a motivating and enriched Music curriculum, children will be able to learn and develop progressive music skills making progress in skills, knowledge, musical appreciation and performance. The children will be able to use correct musical language to explain their musical reflections and through their primary education, depth will be seen in the children’s ability to use their knowledge of music theory in their individual responses.

By the end of their time at Moordown St Johns the children will be able to participate confidently when listening to and discussing a piece of music using correct descriptive vocabulary and will be able to correctly use a percussion instrument, and also a tuned instrument, following simple notation. They will develop an understanding that musical appreciation and composition can be personal to an individual and will develop a real enjoyment for music, being curious to take on musicianship into KS3. Curriculum strands.

Progression Map: