Intent

Music is a unique and expressive communication method that inspires and motivates children. It is a means of personal expression and can play an important part in the personal development of children. Through music, we can express, represent and communicate our ideas and perceptions.

At St. Dunstan’s, we understand how important music is as both a creative yet highly academic subject and the part it plays in a child’s life. We intend to provide children with opportunities to listen to, compose and perform music that’s linked with learning from a range of topics.

To develop children’s learning to become the best musician that they can be, we aim to equip them with the following skills:

• Broaden children’s musical awareness and foster an appreciation of music from different times and cultures.
• Ensuring progression of musical skills involved in performing, composing, listening and appraising.
• To encourage children to express themselves through music and develop self-esteem through musical achievement.
• Involve every pupil in music making and enable them to realise their individual creative potential.
• Contribute to the life of the school and the wider community and to enrich and contribute to other areas of the curriculum.
• A desire to challenge themselves by undertaking the study of new instruments and the further study of their own instrument.
• Encourage children to leave school with a love of music and happy memories of their musical experience that they will want to continue to develop and enjoy.

Implementation

We teach music weekly. The class teacher teaches each lesson and uses the Charanga scheme of work to deliver the curriculum. Focusing on the dimensions of music (pulse, pitch, dynamics, rhythm, texture and tempo) and listening to, improvising, singing and composing music, we plan to provide our children with a quality, enriched and engaging music education.

Impact

Our Music Curriculum is high quality and well-thought-out and planned to demonstrate progression. If children keep up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress. In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes.
• Listening to music from a long range of history genres to gain inspiration and analytical skills.
• Assessment through compositions and performances.
• Having equal opportunities for all pupils.
• Ensemble works through weekly singing assemblies.
• Pupil discussions about their learning.
• Pupils working in mixed-ability groups to develop leadership, responsibility and confidence.