Music
'Music is life itself...' Louis Armstrong
Intent
At St Thomas’, we agree that every child should be musically literate and we emphasise musicality in our Music curriculum and in our Music lessons. To us, the primary years are the formative years for musicians; we encourage children to flourish through our concepts of listening, moving, feeling, performing and composing. We value the time to be creative as musicians to encourage children to explore their emotions. We firmly believe that every child deserves these opportunities that will enrich the quality of life for pupils of all backgrounds as every child learns how to play musical instruments, they learn to sing and to have the opportunity to lay firm foundations of musical literacy.
Implementation
Children’s first instrument at St. Thomas’ is their voice. Their talent is nurtured and grown throughout their years with annual opportunities to perform. As a School, children learn to create feeling and to connect by singing together as a community to be able to hold their own parts and to sing in harmony.
Listening, appraising and moving to music to feel the pulse and to interpret the emotions is part of the foundation of each step of progress in music. From this, children create other art forms and begin to explore musical notation in their own expressive way before advancing to understand formal musical notation.
Being able to play musical instruments is part of the St Thomas’ spiral curriculum. Every child will learn to play instruments with Years One and Two focusing on the ocarina, Years Three and Four the ukulele and Years Five and Six the recorder. This will allow children to express themselves to work as composers creatively through experimentation, to perform with pride and to master their learning through devising compositions.
Fundamental knowledge and skills within the EYFS
The journey of music begins in EYFS where they are provided many opportunities to engage in singing nursery rhymes and memorising songs that allow them to express, create and improvise. Across the year, children explore and learn how to play instruments such as untuned percussion to demonstrate how they feel, as well as exploring rhythm through dancing. Additionally, the children will begin to explore the fundamental elements of music such as pitch, beat and tempo through exploration opportunities. This could be done individually or within small groups.
KS1 and KS2 Concepts: | |
Appraising | Appraising means to evaluate the music according to your likes, dislikes and in relation to the 7 dimensions of music and how they have been applied within the piece being listened to. |
Expressing | Expressing is how children respond to music through expressive arts (dance, movement, drawing etc |
Experimenting | Experimenting is creating, selecting and combining sounds using the inter-related dimensions of music. |
Performing | Performing is applying the learnt experiences of the dimensions to create a purposeful impact on the audience.
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Impact
A St Thomas’ musician will be musically literate and able to listen and appreciate the meaning of music; they will be able to express their emotions through song and they will be able to play instruments. All of this will allow for every child to develop a deep love of music that they will carry with them through life and this appreciation will support them in their journey by giving them a vehicle to be creative and to explore emotions.
