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Music

‘Music is a universal language that embodies the highest forms of creativity.’

National Curriculum - 2019

Intent - What are we trying to achieve? 

At Crane Park Primary School, we aim for our pupils to leave our school with a wide range of happy and rich memories in music formed through interesting and exciting experiences driven by a high-quality music education. 

Our high-quality music education will engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement.

Pupils will meet the National Curriculum expectations in music, which will be taught by staff who will support pupils to develop skills, which in turn will enable them to develop a deeper understanding of the subject.

Pupils will develop self-confidence and teamwork skills through performance. They will have opportunities to sing as a class, in smaller groups and as a school community. 

  • Pupils will have the opportunity to learn to play a musical instrument during music lessons in Year 4 and Year 5. (Some children continue playing as a member of the Year 6 band)
  • Pupils will be exposed to staff notation, increasing their understanding of rhythmic and melodic notation.
  • Pupils will understand how British Values relate to music through a study of music from different faiths and cultures.
  • Pupils will listen to, review and evaluate a range of music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including contemporary music and the works of the great composers and musicians using subject specific vocabulary relating to the musical elements; instrumentation, metre, rhythm, pitch, dynamics, tempo, texture, structure and melody. 

Opportunities will exist for pupils of all ages to experience learning beyond the classroom. This will allow them to enrich their knowledge by, for example, attending performances by professional musicians and participating in school productions. Other opportunities might include visits to concerts, meeting musicians, professional musicians visiting schools to work with pupils. 

Implementation - How is the curriculum being delivered? 

The carefully designed Sing Up scheme ensures consistency and progress of all learners. High quality teaching responds to the needs of the children. The subject leader for music will highlight staff training needs, when and where needed.

High quality input from experts and educational resources complements the delivery of specialist learning excellently. Children understand how music is used in the wider world including careers.

Sing Up Music:

  • provides the foundation to deliver a creative programme of high-quality classroom music activity.
  • sets out the skills, knowledge, and understanding to be gained by all pupils at each stage of learning, with a scheme of work for each year group from N to Y6, with a progressive set of teaching resources that meet the requirements of the Statutory Framework for the EYFS (Expressive Arts), the NC for Music and suggested approaches of the MMC (model music curriculum).
  • covers a broad and diverse range of repertoire, approaches, and musical traditions.
  • supports a fully-integrated approach to musical development, connecting the inter-related strands of singing, playing, performing, composing, improvising, listening, and appraising.
  • is suitable for generalist teachers and music specialists.

Six-week units are based around a song, and the musical learning flows from the features of the piece. Taking an integrated approach, these units combine singing and playing, listening, and appraising as well as some improvising and composing.

Three-week units focus mainly on improvising and composing or on listening and appraising and include lots of practical activity. The ‘listen’ units contain lots of active listening activities to develop and support pupils’ understanding of the cultural, social, and historical context of music, to help children learn the language of music, and to provide a broad and diverse experience of music.

There is a clear progression of skills both within and across year groups.

Impact - What difference is the curriculum making? 

The Sing Up Music scheme is followed and all teachers formatively assess pupils throughout each lesson as well as assessing all pupils each term. These assessment snapshot videos are available for all teachers to view.

We aim for our pupils to appreciate great musicians, composers and performers from across history from a variety of cultures, thereby improving their cultural capital. They will develop a range of musical vocabulary.

All pupils have the opportunity to 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. All pupils show an understanding of how music is created, produced and communicated, developing their technical knowledge and vocabulary. We also have a school choir (Years 3 to 6) so those with the enthusiasm and talent for signing have an opportunity for extra-curricular opportunities.  

Music will promote British Values by developing pupils’ tolerance of other cultures and beliefs through the study of different genres of music and encouraging individual liberty through freedom of expression. Music will help pupils develop a Growth Mindset by encouraging pupils to engage with unfamiliar musical styles and instruments and allowing pupils to share with others and develop each other’s musical understanding.

If you visited a music lesson at Crane Park Primary you would see: 

  • Enthusiasm and passion about music 
  • Children using specialist musical vocabulary and terminology confidently 
  • Practical lessons, with children engaged in listening, singing, composing or performing throughout. 
  • Children given the opportunity to perform, both individually and in groups. 
  • Children using appropriate musical instruments. 
  • Lessons taking place with our confident teachers

Pupil Voice (quotes across both KS1 and KS2)

Year 1: “We sing, make up actions, listen to music, describe it (for example it might be scary) and play instruments. We learn the names of them like a tambourine and shaker.”

Year 4: “We like learning to read music and playing our instruments. We also like the choice of songs and tunes.”.

Year 6: “Most people enjoy singing assembly, and we help others to like it by ‘gamifying’ it’! It’s fun to all sing together in a big group.” 

Cultural Capital

Opportunities will exist for all pupils to experience learning beyond the classroom; this will allow them to enrich their knowledge. For example, pupils will experience the following opportunities:

  • Meeting and talking to musicians
  • Concert performances both in and out of school
  • Playing a range of musical instruments
  • Playing in a band
  • Singing in the choir
  • Learn about key figures from Music history
  • Performing with other choirs
  • Singing during school concerts and productions
  • Charity fundraising events and singing for the local community care homes at Christmas time. 

How do the pupils at Crane Park Primary School develop the school values through Music? 

Our children are able to:

  • connect cooperatively within our multi-cultural school through music lessons, assemblies and performances and within the community such as school choir performances
  • deepen their integrity about when to engage prior knowledge
  • be aspirational when faced with new learning experiences
  • demonstrate responsibility when using resources and instruments
  • respect the ideas and opinions of others when working collaboratively
  • be kind with others by being understanding and supportive of their achievements