“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.”
Primary National Curriculum for Music, 2014
MUSIC CURRICULUM STATEMENT
Music plays an important part in the life of our school. At Alfriston Primary School, we want to engage and inspire the children by encouraging them to listen to and enjoy all types of music through singing, playing instruments and creative music-making.
OUR CURRICULUM INTENT FOR MUSIC
With these aspirations, our intentions for the Music curriculum are:
- For children at Alfriston Primary School to be able to 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;
- For children to learn to sing and use their voices, to create and compose music on their own and with others and have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, use technology appropriately and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence;
- For children to understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated and understand the technical terms: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.
- To develop a curiosity for the subject, as well as an understanding and acceptance of the validity and importance of all types of music, and an unbiased respect for the role that music may wish to be expressed in any person’s life.
- For children to understand the value and importance of music in the wider community, and are able to use their musical skills, knowledge, and experiences to involve themselves in music, in a variety of different contexts.
HOW WE IMPLEMENT OUR INTENTIONS
Our school follows a music scheme called Kapow which allows the pupils to become engaged in the music curriculum. There are lots of wonderful, inspiring resources to help the teachers and children in their music education. It brings together great music, modern pedagogy and the latest educational technology.
Within music lessons the children have access to drums, xylophones and glockenspiels which allows them to find the rhythm within a song and play along. This also means that children can have a go at improvising and composing alongside the music they are studying in the lesson.
Events, such as our Harvest, Easter and Christmas, as well as the Nativity and Year 5/6 performance, give all our children excellent opportunities to perform and show off their musical skills collaboratively.
Our school has a choir and there are a wide range of music lessons available to the children (for example, piano, keyboard, voice, violin, trumpet). As our classes are mixed age, children have a 2-year curriculum cycle - in cycle A, our year 3/4 class spend a whole year learning to play an instrument with Create Music. Our children regularly perform at local events and take part in musical productions. Professional musicians are invited into school for demo concerts and workshops, our Year 5/6 class visits the Glyndebourne Opera House to experience a performance. We organise musical events for our instrument players to perform and share their progress to their families, the rest of the school and the wider community.
