Music

Intent

At Bishop Monkton, we aim to develop a life-long love of music and help children feel that they are musical. We focus on developing the skills, knowledge and understanding that children need to become confident performers, composers, and listeners. Our curriculum introduces children to music from all around the world and across generations, teaching children to respect and appreciate the music of all traditions and communities.

Children will develop the musical skills of singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, improvising and composing music, listening and responding to music. They will develop an understanding of the history and cultural context on the music that they listen to and learn how music can be written down. Through music, our curriculum at Bishop Monkton helps children develop transferrable skills such as team-working, leadership, creative thinking, problem-solving, decision making, and presentation and performance skills.

Music lessons are an interactive, ‘hands on’ opportunity for our pupils to enhance their ability and confidence to perform. Our music curriculum enables the children to become resilient and ambitious learners as they continue to revisit, develop and improve upon their previous learning.

Implementation

Our music curriculum focuses on five strands of music which are then woven together to create engaging and enriching learning experiences.

• Performing 
• Listening
• Composing
• The history of music
• The inter-related dimensions of music

During their time at Bishop Monkton, children will be taught to sing fluently and expressively. And play tuned and untuned instruments accurately and with control. They will learn to recognise the inter-related dimensions of music – pitch, duration, tempo, timbre, structure, texture and dynamics – and use these expressively in their own improvisations and compositions.

Children have frequent opportunities to perform. Our Early years and KS1 lead a Christmas musical in the autumn Term, LKS2 in the spring and UKS2 during the summer. As many of our children have perused their musical passions outside of school we celebrate their achievements at our Summer Musical Soirée. We have a fantastic KS2 choir led by Mrs Cairns and for our younger singers ‘Little Singers’ led by Mrs Filippi.

Early Years

Within our Foundation stetting, music is an integral part of children’s learning journey. Rhyme and rhythm are utilised throughout the learning of phonics, handwriting and mathematics. Children learn a wide range of songs and rhymes and develop skills for performing together. Singing and music making opportunities are used frequently to embed learning, develop musical awareness and to demonstrate how music can be used to express feelings.

Impact

Our music curriculum 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 teaching of vocabulary also forms part of the units of work.

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Pupil discussions and interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
• Annual reporting and tracking of standards across the curriculum.
• Photo and video evidence of the pupil’s practical learning.
• Use of the assessment tools provided within the Kapow scheme.