Intention

What are we trying to achieve?

Our music vision and values are underpinned by the UN Children’s Rights.

Article 29: Education must develop every child’s personality, talents and abilities to the full.

Article 31: Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.

We are enjoying our right to take part in musical activities, and fulfilling our creative dreams. 

We are ambitious musicians. 

We are musically motivated, make progress and perform with confidence. 

We are resilient musicians. 

We persevere when facing new musical challenges. 

We are respectful musicians. 

We appreciate and respect the music of all cultures. 

Our vision for music is part of our wider plan for performing arts at St. Benedict’s Primary and our work towards Artsmark.

 

Implementation

How do we organise this?

Music Curriculum

All pupils participate in a weekly music lesson, with planning based on Charanga's original scheme of work.

Within our curriculum, the interrelated dimensions of music weave through the units to encourage the development of musical skills as the learning progresses through listening and appraising, differing musical activities (including creating and exploring) and performing. Each Unit of Work comprises the of strands of musical learning which correspond with the national curriculum for music:

1 Listening and Appraising

2 Musical Activities

• Warm up Games
• Optional Flexible Games
• Singing
• Playing instruments
• Improvisation
• Composition

3 Performing
 

Musical instruments

Restore the Music awarded us a £10,000 grant to purchase new musical instruments in July 2023. This has enabled us to fully equip our music curriculum and to provide a wide range of musical instruments from a range of cultures. Our instruments include: class sets of glockenspiels, recorders, ukuleles, dhol and djembe drums plus a wide range of percussion instruments.

Music and Arts Centre

We have a dedicated room for storing and using our wide range of instruments. Weekly music lessons and music tuition take place in the MAC. Our pupils look forward to working in this creative and special place!

Specialist tuition

In Year 3, all pupils receive specialist music tuition from our local music hub and learn how to play the ukulele. In Year 4 there is the option of continuing to learn to play the ukulele and tuition continues for elective pupils. In Year 5 and 6, pupils can elect to continue ukulele tuition and this is provided through an after-school club.

Additionally, our local music hub also provides specialist tuition in drumming. We provide an after-school club in djembe and dhol drums.

Rocksteady Music School delivers weekly tuition on electric drums, guitars and keyboards. 

 https://www.rocksteadymusicschool.com/

Performances

For 2023-24, we have planned music concerts in the spring and summer term. There are separate ukulele, djembe and dhol drum performance scheduled. We are also planning for opportunities for our pupils to perform to the wider community and other schools.

In the summer term, we are planning our Festival of Culture, to combine music and cultural celebrations.

Continuous professional development for staff

We recognise that to raise standards in music for our pupils, we need to invest in our staff. Our Charanga music scheme is ideal for both specialist and non-specialist teachers, providing all the resources and information required. We have partnered with our local music hub and received additional staff training, enabling staff to feel confident and knowledgeable to deliver high quality lessons.
 

Impact

How do we know it is successful?

The impact of our music curriculum is heard clearly in our school, through the quality of lessons, music produced and the feedback from our pupils and staff. As part of our monitoring cycle, we completed an annual full Music Review (Nov 2023): lesson observations, staff voice, pupil voice and an audit and creation of a Music Development Plan. The details of our Music Development Plan can be seen below.

This review showed that the planning and delivery of our music curriculum was of a very high standard. We will continue to monitor to ensure that pupils become more secure in their musical knowledge and skills over time.