St Charles’ Catholic Primary School 

Music Policy

At St Charles’ Catholic Primary School we aspire to be musicians! Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. We want out children to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, thus increasing their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement.

Our music curriculum enables our children develop their musical knowledge, understanding and ability. We want our children to enjoy their music lessons and embrace the musical opportunities they are presented with!

St Charles’ Catholic Primary School continues to invest in two peripatetic music teachers – Ms McVey who provides specialist music lessons to each year group for a term twice throughout the year.

St Charles’ Choir, Ukulele musicians and individual musicians partake in a variety of musical events throughout the year including Peace Proms at the M&S Arena, Christmas and End of Year concerts and playing and singing in Parish Masses.

Curriculum Intent

A high-quality music education should engage and inspire pupils. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon.

The intent of St Charles’ Catholic Primary School’s music curriculum is to promote curiosity and a love of learning. It is ambitious and empowers children to become independent and resilient when performing, listening, composing and understanding the history of music. We follow the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum for Key Stage One and Key Stage Two using Kapow.

We engage and inspire our children through a variety of opportunities throughout the year including Hymn singing, Music Assemblies from Key Strings and Presto Music, Christmas and End of Year concerts, performing in the community at James Nugent Court Care Home.

This academic year, as an extra special event, our Key Stage One children will be performing the musical ‘A Magical Land of Sleep’ at school before Christmas and at The Liverpool Empire Theatre in January and our Reception children will be performing ‘The Nativity’ for their parents in the school hall and their parents in church, supported by our Key Stage Two children singing Christmas Carols.

Implementation

In September 2019, a new music lead was appointed. An initial audit of the music curriculum was conducted in September and a new music scheme has been implemented. At St Charles’ Catholic Primary School, music is taught using the Kapow music scheme for four half terms throughout the year by class teachers and by Ms McVey, our peripatetic music teacher, for two half terms each year. The Kapow music scheme provides full coverage of the Key Stage One and Key Stage Two music categorised into four areas taught through themes and/or topics ensuring progression and repetition in terms of embedding key learning, knowledge and skills. The four areas are:

Performing

Listening

Composing

The history of music

The Kapow music scheme provides teachers with weekly lessons plans, clear progression, engaging and exciting whiteboard resources and videos, key questions, differentiation, assessment, national curriculum and cross curricular links for each year group from Year One to Year Five with Year Six topics coming soon. As a result, some Year Five topics are currently being taught in Year Six.

It also enables teachers to develop their knowledge, understanding and skills when teaching music by providing background information for each lesson and tutorials.

Teachers, who are best placed to make these judgements, organise their own year group curriculum for music, under the guidance of the music lead. Year group specific, long-term curriculum maps identify when the different subjects/topics will be taught across the academic year. Medium term curriculum maps show that the vast majority of subjects are taught discretely, but meaningful cross curricular links are made across subjects when and wherever possible, linking prior knowledge to new learning which deepens children’s knowledge, understanding and skills and promotes a broad and balanced curriculum.

Short term plans set out ‘Before the Lesson’ knowledge for the teacher, learning objective(s), success criteria, national curriculum links, key questions, differentiation and assessment. The lesson itself is structured with a ten minute ‘Attention Grabber’ and thirty minute ‘Main Event’ and a ten minute ‘Wrapping Up’. The majority of lessons include videos, online resources and Powerpoint presentations to engage the children.

Staff are encouraged to teach a weekly music lesson, a notable change after the music audit. This helps to ensure sufficient time is allocated to music and that musical subject matter can be revisited frequently, improving the potential for our children to retain what they have been taught, to alter their long-term memory and thus improve the rates of progress they make.

Impact

At St Charles’ we use both formative and summative assessment information in every music lesson. Staff use this information to inform their short-term planning, helping to provide the best possible teaching and learning for all of our pupils, including the more able. Assessment information is collected half termly four times a year by the class teacher and provided twice a year by Ms McVey, our peripatetic music teacher. Monitoring in music includes: book looks, lesson observations and/or learning walks, pupil/parent and/or staff voice. All of this information will be gathered and reviewed during 2019-2020 and will be used to inform further curriculum developments and provision.

Music Curriculum Programmes of Study: Key Stages 1 and 2

Purpose of study

Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. A high-quality music education should 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. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon.

Aims

The national curriculum for music aims to ensure that all pupils:

• 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
• learn to sing and to use their voices, to create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, use technology appropriately and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence
• understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the inter-related dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.

Attainment Target

By the end of each key stage, pupils are expected to know, apply and understand the matters, skills and processes specified in the relevant programme of study.

Subject Content – Key stage 1

Pupils should be taught to:

• use their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes  play tuned and untuned instruments musically
• listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music  experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the inter-related dimensions of music.

Subject Content – Key Stage 2

Pupils should be taught to sing and play musically with increasing confidence and control. They should develop an understanding of musical composition, organising and manipulating ideas within musical structures and reproducing sounds from aural memory.

Pupils should be taught to:

• play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and playing musical instruments with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression
• improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the inter-related dimensions of music
• listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory
• use and understand staff and other musical notations
• appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians  develop an understanding of the history of music.

Extra Curricular

Our School Choir

This year our choir have sung at Peace Proms which took place in the M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool in January.

Our School Choir have already performed in the Arena twice before and have sung in the Metropolitan Cathedral and in venues in our locality.

More photographs are available on the Cross Border Orchestra Facebook page.

In June 2019, 14 members of our school choir performed at ‘The Good Shepherd Mass’ in the Metropolitan Cathedral.

Outside Companies 

We have enjoyed performances from Key Strings…

and Presto Music…