Music at Highfield

 

At Highfield Community Primary School, our vision is for our pupils to receive a high-quality music education which engages and inspires pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians. Our children will display an increase in their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. They will develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon. They have a passion for and commitment to a diverse range of musical activities!

Our Goals

1. Children are confident and enjoy performance and understand that music is created to be performed.
2. Children take joy in creating music. They appreciate, understand and implement the different techniques used when composing a piece of music using a variety of instruments.
3. Teachers ensure children have a rapidly widening repertoire which they use to create original, imaginative, fluent and distinctive composing and performance work.
4. Children confidently use varying forms of notation to transcribe melodies.
5. Children understand that compositions need to be understood by others and that there are techniques (transcription) and a language for communicating them.
6. Through the children’s appreciation of different genres of music they are able to appraise and describe music.
7. Teachers introduce children to a range of age-appropriate musical vocabulary and children use this confidently.
8. The progression of musical subject content and skills is carefully planned for and clearly evident.

 

Curriculum

At Highfield Community Primary School, we deliver a music curriculum that is creative, engaging, challenging and progressive, all centered on expanding our children’s repertoire and love of music. We aim to facilitate opportunities for the children to become high quality musicians who appreciate multiple genres of music, and most importantly, enjoy all that music has to offer.   We use the Charanga music scheme as the base for our curriculum.  This is because it a progressive scheme which builds on prior knowledge and skills.  It also allows teachers (both specialists and non-specialists) to share their love for the art.

 

EYFS

There are four key aspects of musical learning and development: Hearing and Listening; Vocalising and Singing; Moving and Dancing; Exploring and Playing. It can be seen within the four aspects how music threads through all areas of learning and development. Music can be a way of exploring, communicating and responding to experience. Making music with others can be a social experience, this interaction with others, whether this be with one other person or a group, is personal to each individual and is often an expression of feelings. All vocal communication is comprised of musical elements such as pitch, rhythm and timbre, demonstrating that musicality is an intrinsic part of being human. Music should be seen as a core component of children’s learning and should be shared with young children to ensure they have broad, balanced and rounded experiences in early childhood and beyond.

KS1 and KS2

The national curriculum for music aims to ensure that all pupils:

• Perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians.
• Learn to sing and to use their voices, to create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, use technology appropriately and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence.
• Understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the inter-related dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.

Within each unit of work, each year group focuses on a different aspects and genre. The skills learnt from the previous year are built upon, so that by Year 6 the children have a comprehensive understanding of 6 of the key genres of music.

 

The lessons are designed to be interactive, engaging and allow opportunities for the four key elements to be explored within every genre (composition, transcription, performance and description). Our bespoke music scheme enables the children to see the progress they are making and allows them to take ownership and pride of their learning.

 

Assessment

At Highfield Community Primary School we all agree that the effective assessment of children’s learning helps us to ensure that each child makes good or better progress so that ‘Together We Achieve Our Best.’ This section therefore outlines the various assessment methods and practices that we use to monitor pupil progress and attainment in music at Highfield Community Primary School, and also ensure that the activities that we plan for our children are suitably matched to their ability and level of development.

 

In every lesson, the children are also given feedback to help them achieve their best. This may be in the form of written marking or through discussions with members of staff. What’s more, each term the children have the opportunity to partake in a one-to-one conference with their teacher, during which they are able to talk in detail about progress and attainment in all aspects of the curriculum.

 

Cross-Curricular

Music is a versatile subject, which can be used to enhance all areas of the curriculum. From the very beginning of a child’s education, music is used to learn nursery rhymes and the alphabet, and sing as part of the 'Storybox' ritual.  As we move through the school, a ‘King George – Horrible Histories’ song enables children to have a deeper understanding of the characteristics of the different King Georges that ruled the United Kingdom. At Highfield Community Primary School we aim to create engaging and exciting curriculums across all subjects, and the use of music is one way that we facilitate this, to make the children’s learning as exciting and memorable as possible.

 

Visits and Enrichment

At Highfield Community Primary School we place great importance on visits and enrichment experiences to support the children’s understanding of and love from music. These visits and visitors, which provide valuable opportunities for learning through first-hand experience, are therefore an integral part of the curriculum and allow our children to make valuable connections between what they have learned in class and their first hand experiences in the real-world.

Examples of some of the fantastic musical opportunities we provide for our children include:

• Trips to the pantomime
• Participation in the AmaSing concert (and club)
• Participation in seasonal concerts (i.e. Christmas Concerts)
• Live music assemblies
• Peripatetic music teachers
• Weekly singing assemblies
• Talent Shows
• KS2 participation in BEV Musical Performances
• EYFS/ KS1 Nativities
• Season specific productions (Harvest, Easter, Remembrance, Jubilee, etc.)

 

Pupil Voice

At Highfield Community Primary School we believe that the view of every pupil is important to ensure that we provide the best education possible. Here is a selection of pupil voice collected during the 2023/24 academic year, and in some cases, what we are doing / have done to improve the music education that we provide.

Nursery… “I sang Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star in the Nativity”

Reception… “We made robot sounding music – it was funny!”

Year 1… “Singing assemblies are my favourite”

Year 2…“I love using all the instruments in school to make music”

Year 3… “I am excited by music lessons because I get to learn new things”

Year 4… “When Miss McHale came in and showed us all of the musical instruments – it was amazing”

Year 5…“The Drumming workshop was AWESOME!  It was my favourite time of year!”

Year 6… “I enjoy music because I can express myself”

 

Documents and Useful Links

Please see below a selection of documents that relate to the intent, implementation, and impact of music teaching and learning at Highfield Community Primary School. Click on the links below for useful resources too!

 

Highfield Community Primary School Music Development Plan 2024/5

Approach to the Teaching of Music – Highfield Community Primary School

Music Programme of Study – Highfield Community Primary School

Music Primary National Curriculum Programme of Study Key Stages 1 & 2