Music

Welcome to Music at Gainsborough Primary and Nursery School!

INTENT

At Gainsborough we value music because it is a powerful and unique form of communication that can change and impact the way children feel, think and act. Exposing children to music during early development helps them to learn the sounds and meanings of words. Dancing to music helps children build motor skills while allowing them to practice self-expression. Our aim is that every child will develop the musical skills of singing, playing tunes and untuned instruments, improvising and composing music, and listening and responding to music. They will develop and understanding of the history and cultural context of the music that they listen to and learn how music can be written down. We believe that every child should have the opportunity to develop their musical potential and we aim to nurture and encourage musical development across the school. Through music, our curriculum helps develop transferable skills such as team work, leadership, creative thinking, problem solving, decision making and presentation and performance skills. Gainsborough Primary and Nursery school uses Kapow Primary Music scheme of work which enables pupils to meet the end of key stage attainment targets outlined in the National curriculum and the aims of the scheme align with those in the National curriculum.

IMPLEMENTATION

The music curriculum at Gainsborough Primary and Nursery School uses Kapow Primary's Music scheme and takes a holistic approach to music, in which the strands of music are woven together to create engaging and enriching learning experiences:

Listening and evaluating whereby children will be exposed to different genres of music from diverse periods and cultures, in order to evaluate them.
Creating sound whereby children will learn how to create and control sound using their voices, tuned and untuned instruments.
Notation which allows children to understand how music is communicated through various notation styles
Improvising and composing music which gives children the opportunity to compose music for different purposes and improves their ability to improvise in their performances.
Performingwhereby children are able t perform their compositions in front of audiences of varying sizes.

Each Kapow unit of work combines each of these strands within a cross-curricular topic designed to capture pupils' imagination and encourage them to explore music enthusiastically. Through the lessons pupils will taught how to sing fluently and expressively, and play tuned and untuned instruments accurately and with control. Children will learn to recognise, demonstrate and name the interrelated dimensions of music - pitch, duration, tempo, timbre, structure, texture and dynamics - and use these expressively in their own improvisations and compositions. The Gainsborough Music curriculum, using Kapow, is a spiral curriculum so that all skills and knowledge are built upon and revisited, each year.

Strong subject knowledge is vital for staff to be able to deliver a highly effective and robust music curriculum. Each unit of lessons includes multiple teacher videos to develop subject knowledge and support ongoing CPD, aiding teachers in their own acquisition of musical skills and knowledge. Further CPD opportunities can also be found via webinars with our music subject specialists. Kapow has been created with the understanding that many teachers do not feel confident delivering the music curriculum and every effort has been made to ensure that they feel supported to deliver lessons of a high standard that ensure pupil progression.

An instrumental scheme is also delivered by our music hub, Music For Life, to Year 4 pupils and gives pupils and opportunity to learn the violins for a prolonged period, allowing them to develop technical proficiency on a single instrument. As part of their development, children will perform their musical instrument to parents and the school

Alongside our curriculum provision for music, pupils also have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument with peripatetic teachers. Our peripatetic music teaching is organised by the Local Education Authority’s ‘Music for Life’ and 'Front Row Music'. Lessons are provided weekly for a small set fee paid by the child’s parent/carer. Lessons can include guitar, ukulele and keyboard. Gainsborough also have Rock Steady come to the school on a Thursday. This gives all children, from Reception to Year 6, the opportunity to create their own rock band, for a fee from parents. All instruments are provided and, again, children will have the opportunity to perform their music as a band.

We also have a thriving school choir with children performing at school events and in assemblies as well as taking part in Crewe Out Loud and other events.

Each year, all pupils enjoy live performances where they have the opportunity to learn about different instruments and musical styles in a fun, interactive and engaging way. This year, we are having 'Rock Kidz' to transform our school hall into a rock concert for the day. Our annual Arts Week provides opportunities for pupils to explore and experiment with music from other cultures.

Finally, children take part in weekly singing assemblies as well as having the opportunity to listen to different artists each month as part of our weekly Key Stage assemblies.

IMPACT

Our music curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression and build on and embed current skills. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills in the different musical components and like other subjects, discrete vocabulary progression also forms part of the units of work. To achieve this, we use Kapow Primary scheme which can be monitored through both formative and summative assesment opportunities. Each lesson includes guidance and support for teachers in assessng pupils against the learning objectives and at the end of each unit there is often a performance which is filmed and filed so that teachers can make summative assesment of pupils' learning.

If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress. The impact of our music curriculum, following Kapow Primary Music scheme of work, is that children will:

Be confident performers, composers and listeners and will be able to express themselves musicall at and beyond school.
Show an appreciation and respect for a wide range of musical styles from around the world and will understand how music is influenced by the wider cultural, socail and historical contexts in which it is developed.
Understand the various ways in which music can be written down to suport performing and composing actvities
Demonstrate and articulate an enthusiasm for music and be able to identify their own personal musical preferences.
Meet the end of key stage expectations outlined in the National Curriculum for Music.

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods: