Music at The Links
Curriculum Intent
Across the family of Vision Academy Trust primary schools we are developing a bespoke and forward thinking approach to teaching music in the classroom, as well as supporting students’ learning with outstanding opportunities to learn musical instruments alongside the curriculum, and to sing, rehearse and perform beyond the curriculum.
- All students have a discrete, hour-long music lesson each week; this is often taught by a specialist music teacher through the trust provision.
- Our curriculum planning is in line with the National Curriculum, and takes many good features from the DfE Model Curriculum for Music. Furthermore, it has already responded to the new DfE National Plan for Music Education.
- We put considerable focus on singing and the use of voice in our learning.
- Use very practical methods such as singing, body percussion, kinaesthetic activities as a route into learning more theoretical aspects of music such as rhythm and pitch notation, and difficult concepts such as metre changes.
- We are very positive about learning musical notation at all ages in an appropriate way, through practical music making.
- We are very positive about learning key music vocabulary and reaffirm these key words consistently throughout the children’s music education.
- Students perform in a variety of musical styles and genres, and are able to make use of those techniques to compose music of their own in a similarly wide variety of styles.
- Students listen to, and learn to appraise, a wide variety of music, including music from historically significant composers and ‘master works’ in a wide variety of genres and styles. Students develop a good basic understanding of the history of music and the key stylistic periods and composers.
- Alongside the hour-long curriculum music lessons, all students learn to play a musical instrument, such as cornet, guitar, cello, violin, in a small group for at least a term. This is a very strong feature of our music education provision within the academy trust.
Curriculum Implementation
Many music lessons are taught by a subject specialist through the academy trust provision. However, all classroom teachers engage with the music curriculum and are encouraged to supplement the specialist teaching with strongly connected activities such as, for example, singing at the start or end of the day.
The opportunity for students to have free, small group, tuition on a variety of instruments with a specialist teacher is a very strong feature of the music education provided through Vision Academy Learning Trust. All students have the opportunity to continue to learn an instrument in the long term with subsidised small group and 1:1 weekly lessons provided on a very wide variety of instruments.
Students within the trust have access to some outstanding performance opportunities beyond the classroom. These can range from Christmas in-school performances, to a musical at a professional venue at the end of the academic year.
Many students take up learning an instrument or singing lessons in the longer term. Those students have access to weekly lessons with a specialist teacher, can undertake graded examinations through trust provision, and can access ensembles and choirs outside of curriculum time.
Curriculum Impact:
In the early years students will:
- Sing regularly. Sing a wide variety of appropriately pitched songs.
- Incorporate simple physical actions into songs – building basic musical coordination skills.
- Experiment with a variety of tuned and untuned instruments.
- Learn very basic musical vocabulary such as high and low, fast and slow.
- Be encouraged to listen to music with concentration and to try and describe what they heard using either basic musical or emotive language.
Key Stage 1 pupils will:
- Sing regularly. Sing a wide variety of appropriately pitched songs. Sing with increasing complexity including songs by famous composers.
- Learn key vocabulary and basic rhythm and pitch notation through singing.
- Learn about the basics of music – pulse, rhythm, pitch – though a wide variety of kinaesthetic and listening activities.
- Learn to recognise, describe and use practically minim, crotchet, quaver, semi-quaver and crotchet rest notation.
- Learn to recognise, describe and use practically a 5 note scale starting on C or G using staff notation
- Learn a wide variety of ‘stock’ rhythmic and melodic patterns to facilitate learning how to compose music.
- Learn how music can be affected by articulation using terms such as ‘spikey’ or ‘smooth’ and perform musical examples using such articulation.
- Learn key musical vocabulary an use it to describe musical examples.
- Make links between visual stimuli and musical ideas and justify the links using musical vocabulary.
- Create soundscape compositions using a variety of tuned and untuned instruments.
- Listen to and study the music of famous historical composers.
- Learn key facts about specific composers and historic compositional styles.
- Perform short extracts of music by famous composers on tuned instruments.
- Learn, perform and compose music that reflects different cultures and traditions.
- Learn to perform as an ensemble using tuned and untuned instruments.
Key Stage 2 Pupils will:
- Sing regularly and with increasing complexity.
- Sing in parts and with basic harmony. Learn songs with up to 3 parts.
- Consider singing technique such as breathing and diction. Develop singing with expression.
- Be able to identify, understand and use minims, crochets, quavers, semi-quavers and crochet rests using written notation.
- Have a confident understanding of the musical basics – pulse, rhythm and pitch.
- Being understanding and working with different metre – in 3 and 4 time.
- Perform a variety of common rhythmic and melodic patterns to support future composition and improvisation work.
- Understand and use a wider variety of expressive musical concepts such as dynamics, articulation, tempo and tonality.
- Reflect a simple storyboard into tuned music using a variety of musical techniques.
- Develop a more in depth understanding of the history of music, including the terms early music, Baroque, Classical, Romantic and modern.
- Listen to a wider variety of music from each historical period and understand the key points in history that shaped the development of music style.
- Learn about some key composers from each musical period.
- Transcribe
- Play a wider variety of music by important historical composers using tuned instruments.
- Learn about and perform a wider variety of music from different cultures.
- Compose more complex music, including syncopated patterns, to complement a variety of world music styles including African and Latin American music.
- Compose using the pentatonic scale to reflect the music of Asia.
- Have the opportunity to study a musical instrument for a term, in a small group, with a specialist teacher and learn the associated techniques required to produce sound and varying pitch and rhythm on that instrument.
- Connect many of the concepts learned and explored within curriculum work in this complementary instrumental work.
- Learn about the basic physics and mechanics of the chosen instrument and understand how a variety of instruments produce sound (strings, wind, percussion)
- Learn to perform in an organised and confident fashion.
