Music

Intent

At Eaton Valley Primary School, our children show a good understanding of what Music is. It is our ambition that every young person should be able to experience music and make progress. We ensure that all children are provided with the opportunity to showcase their learning through the following key areas: singing, listening, composing and performing. All of these areas contribute to the steadily increasing development of musicianship.

Our intent is to provide the children with a rich and varied musical framework that nurtures fundamental music techniques alongside building musical knowledge. We offer a broad variety of lessons across a variety of historical periods, styles, traditions and music genres. We are committed to ensuring that our children understand the value and importance of music and that music enriches individual lives as well as our school’s wider community.

Implementation

At Eaton Valley, we follow a structured music programme called Music Express. From this, we have created our own long-term and medium-term planning which provides a structured guidance to inform lesson plans. This has been adapted to meet the target tracker statements and needs and abilities of all of our children. The scheme also shows a clear sequence of lessons and progression of skills throughout the school. Linked knowledge organisers provide the children with the opportunity to learn and retain the key vocabulary and knowledge learnt within each unit.

We pride ourselves in; delivering weekly whole-school singing assemblies, attending various concerts and performances, running music clubs and teaching from specialist music teachers. In the lesson’s, children learn key aspects of Music through cross-curricular links. The skills learnt in Music are developed through the year groups with a focus on the different dimensions of Music. This in turn develops the children’s understanding when listening to, playing or analysing music.

Music lessons at Eaton Valley include:

Effective planning with clear learning outcomes and success criteria, differentiated for all abilities of children.
Teaching a range of musical skills such as performing, composition, analysis and investigation of key composers and musical eras.
Prior knowledge to be built upon and added to each lesson.

Impact

At Eaton Valley, the use of our planning and Music Express scheme ensures that children develop an in-depth understanding of culture and history. Children are encouraged to enjoy music in many different ways either as a listener, creator or performer, ensuring that they understand how powerful music can be. Our children understand that music can be creative, collaborative and celebratory and that it has a rare ability to bring people together.

Our Music curriculum ensures that children have:

Confidence and competence in a wide range of musical skills.
The ability to explore their own creativity alongside building musical knowledge.
Progression in skills through the key stages.
Cross-curricular links.
A passion for music.
Music activities within school and in the wider community such as singing assemblies, choirs and activities with outside agencies like Young Voices.

We measure the impact of our Music curriculum through:

Evidence via book trawls and iPad data.
Pupil conferencing across the school.
Start and end of unit quizzes.
Assessment of prior knowledge at the start of lessons.
Assessment for learning throughout the lessons and at the end.
Data analysis using our school tracking system – Target Tracker.