What is Music?
Whether we realise it or not, music plays a huge part in all our lives. When music is playing, we dance, we cry, we sing, we smile – it is extraordinarily life enhancing. It’s impossible to not notice how children respond to music and how much they enjoy how it makes them feel.
Every child should experience the range of emotions music can bring. Every child, regardless of their privilege, should have access to an education where the acquisition of musical skills, appreciation of the awe and wonder it can evoke and an opportunity to play a musical instrument is embedded.
How and when do we teach music?
Music is taught as a discrete subject by the class teacher or by one of our music specialists who follow the Sing Up Scheme for their weekly lessons while making reference to subject guidelines set out in the New Model Music Curriculum. Where possible, the themes are directly linked to ongoing topic work. In school we have a designated music room filled with a great variety of specialist equipment. We also invite specialist teachers to run music workshops across the year groups so that a broader experience and wider access to instruments is provide.
Why do we teach music?
We are sometimes taught by Miss Playle who plays the trumpet. Year 3 had the chance to hold it. Some other pupils across school are now starting to having trumpet lessons from one of the peripatetic teachers.
Music is an entitlement.
At Poppleton Road Primary School we have always valued music and it plays an important and regular part in the delivery of our wider curriculum as detailed in our Big Idea; during assemblies, in discreet music lessons often led by a specialist teacher, at special times of the year when we come
together as a whole school to celebrate, and also when specialists from outside the school are invited to perform and to run workshops. In our school passports we have made a commitment to our pupils that they will all be given the opportunity to learn to play an instrument during their time at Poppleton Road. This can be fulfilled by working together with the York Music Hub who are able to provide us with sets of instruments as well as expert tuition and also by our own specialist teachers.
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Curriculum Statement
Progression of knowledge and skills
What is taught in Music?
The subject has 4 main aims:
- Pupils will perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions.
- They will learn to sing and to use their voices, to create and compose music.
- They will have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument and use technology in music appropriately.
- They will start to understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated with these dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.
Specific skills and knowledge.
Skills in music can be broken down into these very simple areas:
- Listening and evaluating
- Singing
- Composition
- Performance
- Rhythm, pitch, dynamics
EYFS Progression of knowledge and skills
The Interrelated Dimensions of Music.
