Music

Our Intent

At Southwark Primary School we engage, motivate and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and to make it an enjoyable learning experience. Music is a unique way of communicating which can inspire and motivate pupils. It is a vehicle for personal expression, and it can play an important part in children’s personal and cognitive development. Our music curriculum aims to reflect our culture and society, so that the teaching and learning of music enables children to better understand the world they live in. Music also plays an important part in helping children to feel part of a community. We provide opportunities for all children to participate in a variety of musical experiences to create, play, perform and enjoy music in a variety of settings throughout the school year. This aims to build up their confidence, resilience and self-esteem. Singing lies at the heart of good music teaching. Our teaching focuses on developing the children’s ability to sing in tune and with other people. Through singing songs, children learn about the structure and organisation of music. We teach them to listen to and appreciate a wide variety of musical forms and to begin to make judgements about the quality of music. Children develop descriptive skills in music lessons when learning about how music can represent feelings and emotions. It is important that they are given the opportunity to experience and study a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions and cultures. We teach children to make music together, to understand various ways of writing music and to compose pieces.

Music Throughout Southwark

At Southwark, our Music Curriculum is in line with expectations set out in the 2014 National Primary Curriculum which provides a broad framework outlining the knowledge and skills taught in each Key Stage. Our programme of study is based on the Charanga Scheme of work, which ensures consistency and progression throughout the school. We recognise that musical teaching and learning is not neat and linear. Therefore, in line with the National Curriculum for music and guidance from Ofsted, the Charanga scheme moves away from the previous levels and learning objectives to an integrated, practical, exploratory and child-led approach to musical learning. The interrelated dimensions of music weave through the units to encourage the development of musical skills as the learning progresses through listening and appraising, differing musical activities (including creating and exploring) and performing. The Charanga Musical Scheme provides teachers with week-by-week lesson support for each year group in the school. It is ideal for specialist and non-specialist teachers and provides lesson plans, assessment, clear progression, and engaging and exciting whiteboard resources to support every lesson.

Charanga’s Units of Work enable children to understand musical concepts through a repetition-based approach to learning. Learning about the same musical concept through different musical activities enables a more secure, deeper learning and mastery of musical skills. Musical teaching and learning is not neat or linear. The strands of musical learning, presented within the lesson plans and the on-screen resources, are part of the learning spiral. Over time, children can both develop new musical skills and concepts, and re-visit established musical skills and concepts. Repeating a musical skill doesn’t necessarily mean their progress is slowing down or their development is moving backwards! It's just shifting within the spiral. Mastery means both a deeper understanding of musical skills
and concepts and learning something new. 

All musical learning in this scheme is built around the Interrelated Dimensions of Music*: pulse, rhythm, pitch, tempo, dynamics, timbre, texture, structure and notation. These dimensions are at the centre of all the learning.

From Reception to Year 6, the learning consists of six half-termly Units of Work. The final unit in each year - Reflect, Rewind and Replay - allows for revision and more extension activities.

 EYFS

• To sing the melodic shape of familiar songs.
• To create their own songs, or improvise a song around one they know.
• To play instruments with increasing control to express their feelings and ideas.
• To listen attentively, move to and talk about music, expressing their feelings and responses.
• To sing in a group or on their own, increasingly matching the pitch and following the melody.
• To explore and engage in music making performing solo or in groups

Key Stage 1

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

Key Stage 2

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