Patterdale Music Curriculum

INTENT

At Patterdale, it is our vision that:

• Children will be given as many opportunities as possible to develop their musicianship
• Children will be encouraged to active participants in the musical life of the school. 
• Our music curriculum and wider provision will aim to ensure that children enjoy access to a diverse range of music and music-making opportunities.
• That children are encouraged to view themselves as musicians.
• Our scheme of work will largely follow ‘Charanga’, with priority placed on providing those of all abilities with music lessons that are enjoyable, practical and interactive.
• We will utilise musical expertise of staff; we are lucky to currently have a music specialist teacher within our staff who is able to teach a variety of instruments.

TEACHING MIXED AGE CLASSES

Music is taught as a discrete subject in mixed-age classes, but is celebrated as a whole school, with teachers also trying to incorporate music into other subject areas to enhance learning (eg from nursery rhymes at EYFS to traditional music from history and background classical music during art sessions). In music lessons, children explore the inter-related dimensions of pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations. We aim to teach the musical notes with the musical staff from an early age, with children at EYFS beginning to learn this structure as simple crotchets and four beats to each bar.

From Reception to Year 6, there is a broad balance of performance, listening and composition opportunities, where children build on previous learning to embed their understanding and develop their musicianship, which includes learning from their mistakes. The inter-related dimensions of music are explored in fun and exciting ways, with all children having the chance to regularly use a variety of musical instruments and experience music from different genres, traditions and from a range of diverse musicians.  High quality whole school singing enables children to come together and celebrate the joy of music, with regular services and performances during the school year eg through collective worship, also allowing them to share this with family members and the wider community.

Learning an instrument:

We provide accessible and affordable opportunities to learn to play an instrument facilitated by school staff with musical expertise. This complements our Charanga music curriculum which enables students to develop the skills they need to make progress throughout the key-stages. We have selected glockenspiels from Y2, ukuleles and recorders at KS2, as basic, affordable instruments to begin to read the musical staff and chords. All children are issued with their own glockenspiel at Y2 and Ukulele at Y3 (to carry through to Y6).

As a curriculum, Charanga also provides non specialist teaching staff with support and a scheme of learning to follow.

All children are given their own Charanga accounts to support music learning at home.

Singing

Our children love to sing and we provide opportunity for ALL children to sing a wide variety of songs from different musical styles and genres. They are encouraged to sing solos in our performances and develop the skills of learning to sing in rounds and part harmonies. They perform at our community events, including: Christmas plays, Leaver’s services and our church services throughout the year.

We also have singing during Collective Worship every Thursday where we sing in unison, in parts and in rounds and sometimes we sing in harmony.

CONTENT

The children at Patterdale CofE Primary School will:

• Be introduced to a diverse range of music from around the world.
• Be able to experiment with music and learn from mistakes.
• Have an awareness of pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure
• Understand how musical history and musicians of interest have played a part in history and in the world of music today.
• Celebrate their musical efforts and be able to express themselves with their voices and knowledge of music.
• Have the opportunity to learn an instrument throughout their time at Primary School, encouraging their personal love of music and preparing them for secondary school.

ASSESSMENT & MONITORING

As part of the music programme, we will:

• Start the lesson by reviewing prior learning.
• Interview children throughout the school year.
• Have retrieval practice built in to lessons to assess understanding.