Music
Intent
At St Matthew’s C of E Primary school, we believe that Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. Music provides a powerful and unique form of communication that can change and impact the way children feel, think and act.
Music teaching at St Matthew’s aims to follow the specifications of the National Curriculum; providing a broad, balanced and differentiated curriculum and ensuring the progressive development of musical concepts, knowledge and skills in order to become confident performers, composers and listeners. We believe that music plays an integral role in including children and enabling them to feel part of a community, therefore we provide opportunities for all children to develop their musical potential and we aim to nurture and encourage musical development across the school.
Implementation
Music teaching at St Matthew’s delivers the requirements of the National Curriculum through use of the 'Kapow Primary' scheme of work. Kapow Primary's Music scheme takes a holistic approach to music in which individual strands below are woven together to create engaging and enriching experiences:
- Performing
- Listening
- Composing
- The history of music
- The inter-related dimensions of music
Kapow offers a topic-based approach to support children’s learning in music. It follows a steady progression plan that guides the children’s learning and development throughout their schooling experience. The children will be taught how to sing fluently and expressively, and play tuned and untuned instruments accurately and with control. The will learn to recognise and name the inter-related dimensions to music; pitch, duration, tempo, timbre, structure, texture, and dynamics- and use these expressively in their own improvisations and compositions.
Within the EYFS setting, music is an integral part of children’s learning journey. Rhyme, rhythm and dynamics are utilised throughout the learning of play, phonics, handwriting and mathematics. Children learn a wide range of songs and rhymes and develop skills for performing together. Singing and music making opportunities are regularly used to embed learning, develop musical awareness and to demonstrate how music can be used to express feelings.
Children in Year Two and Three benefit from whole class specialist teaching. These lessons allow children the opportunity to learn to play an instrument as part of an ensemble and to engender a love of music learning. Throughout the sessions the interrelated elements of music are developed.
Performance is at the heart of musical teaching and learning at St Matthew’s and pupils participate in a range of performances during their school ‘career’. These include nativities (EYFS/KS1), Easter performances and a Leavers performance (Year 6). Pupils also take part in Harvest assemblies and weekly singing assemblies.
As part of St Matthew’s long-term commitment to music, we have invested in Merton Music Foundations Service Level Agreement, which gives us access to a wide range of workshops, staff training and borough support for our continuous improvement.
Impact
Our music Curriculum is designed to demonstrate progression and build on, and embed current skills. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills in the different musical components and teaching of vocabulary forms part of the units of work. If children are achieving the knowledge and skills in lessons, then they are deemed to be making progress in their learning.
We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:
- Pupil discussions and interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
- Annual reporting and tracking of standards across the curriculum.
- Photo and video evidence of the pupils practical and performance based learning.
- Use of the assessment tools provided within the Kapow scheme.
- Dedicated music leader time.
The impact of our music curriculum is also measured in the uptake of our music after school clubs and uptake of additional music 1:1 teaching.
Additional music teaching:
Guitar, Piano, Choir, Rocksteady band, MTech, Recorder
We are also part of 'Mini Musicians', which is an innovative new music teaching programme for Merton's Early Years and Key Stage 1 pupils. This is delivered in partnership of 'Sing up'. It is the basis of a comprehensive research study led by Roehampton University.
