Music

St. Edmund’s Catholic Primary School

Music Intent Document

Intent

At St Edmund’s Catholic Primary School, we are MUSICIANS! We want our children to be enthusiastic about Music and to explore the impact musicians has had on both the past and modern world. We want them to have no limits to what their ambitions are and hope to inspire children to think critically, reflectively and creatively in order to appraise, explore and create their own pieces of music. We recognise the key role that music plays in equipping our children with skills that they can use for life, allowing them to think critically while also developing their own musical skills that they will be able to call upon throughout their lives. We hope to inspire and motivate our learners to think outside the box and to take safe risks in order to achieve greatness. At St Edmund’s, we believe the next big hit will come from Skelmersdale!

For our Music curriculum we follow the scheme Charanga. This enables children to develop their interest, knowledge and understanding of Music through the reoccurring strands of: listening, appraising, playing, singing and performing. The disciplinary knowledge is developed from EYFS through to Year Six, through the age-related skills taught through the Charanga planning.

The children will develop their Music knowledge, by exploring existing songs/artists, exploring features of different songs, taking part in educational visits or visitor workshops and using a variety of different interactive and creative resources.

Implementation

Each unit is built around a specifically selected song and artist. The children will begin the unit becoming immersed in the song. They will recognise rhythm and pulse, different beats, tempo, instruments and genre of music. The children will then begin practicing singing the lyrics; with a focus on learning the chorus and then the different verses. Throughout the listening and appraising sections, the children will be asked open ended and reflective questions.

During the next phase, the children will practice singing and composing Music using the various Musical Activities provided. The children will also have opportunities to explore creating beats and rhythms with different musical instruments.

Impact

Our Music curriculum offers high quality and well-planned lessons, which encourages progression. Key vocabulary is embedded in each lesson. Continuity and progression in the curriculum are built around substantive and disciplinary knowledge within Music. These are broken into year group expectations.

In order to ensure our aims have been met, we scrutinise learning through:

•   Assessing children’s understanding of the topic including linked vocabulary throughout the unit through using reflective questioning.
•   Talking to children during the lesson to ensure they have understood the learning objective – Assessment for learning.
•   Mark completed work – Assessment for learning

The above enables the teacher to make an informed judgement on the children’s understanding and record their designer ability on the school tracking tool ‘itrack’.