Intent

At St Mary’s we believe that all children should be given the opportunity to learn a musical instrument. St Mary’s allows children to explore a range of instruments, encouraging them to flourish and reach for the stars. We take pride in providing children with an inclusive yet challenging curriculum, creating exciting, practical learning experiences which motivate pupils to achieve the best they can. We endeavour to make all our children active musicians.

We believe that music is a universal language, that we all have a voice and we encourage pupils to use it through singing and performance. Through engaging lessons, we strive to develop pupils’ musicianship and critical engagement. We recognise that music promotes confidence, creativity and a sense of achievement. We hope to enhance pupils’ love and respect of music and themselves as these are qualities that we nurture within our children.

Implementation

Children at St Mary’s receive lessons from a specialist music teacher.  These lessons are for an hour every 2 weeks, which averages out at ½ hour per week.  The lessons are based around objectives outlined in the National Curriculum which include

• Use their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes
• Play tuned and untuned instruments musically
• Listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music
• Experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the inter-related dimensions of music.
• Sing and play musically with increasing confidence and control. They should develop an understanding of musical composition, organising and manipulating ideas within musical structures and reproducing sounds from aural memory.
•  Play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and playing musical instruments with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression.
• Improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the inter-related dimensions of music. 
• Listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory.
• Use and understand staff and other musical notations.
• Appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians.
• Develop an understanding of the history of music.

Impact 

By the end of KS2 we aim for all children to have the confidence to play a number of instruments to a standard of which they can perform by themselves or in an ensemble, preparing them for KS2 music lessons. We hope that children will have gained the technical skills to decide when to use their instruments for different effect eg chords and melody, whilst also using the interrelated dimensions of music to play their instruments both expressively and creatively. Children should be able to use basic notation to both read and write, which will assist them with performance, listening and composition. Over the course of KS2 we aim to have developed critical thinkers with who can appraise themselves and their peers encouraging learning and progression throughout KS2.