Music

Music Curriculum overview

Music skills progression document

Music is highly valued at Hugh Myddelton Primary School, as we ensure that all of our EYFS, KS1 & KS2 pupils are continuously exposed to quality first teaching.

Our approach is to provide all pupils with the opportunity to excel and express themselves musically by delivering an extensive programme of high-quality music provision. That is based on building knowledge, the model music curriculum and is bespoke to our setting.

Our wide and expansive range of musical instruments and equipment allows pupils to experience well-resourced music lessons following the national curriculum, whole class instrumental lessons, choirs and instrumental clubs.

Each Key Stage within the school focuses on age-appropriate skills and uses a range of strategies and interventions to support the pupils.

In Early Years Foundation Stage
Pupils explore and use a variety of media through a combination of child initiated and adult directed activities.

They have opportunities to learn to:
·         Explore and experiment with musical instruments.
·         Sing songs, make music and experiment with ways of changing them

Key Stage 1 & 2
We maintain a core focus on rhythm, patterns and structure throughout KS1 and KS2, with different age-appropriate focal points alongside this to build a wider understanding of fundamental musical concepts, as described in the National Curriculum, including:

·         Pitch
·         Dynamics
·         Tempo
·         Duration
·         Music Notation
·         Performance
·         Musical features

Concepts are explored, recapped and consolidated not only from lesson-to-lesson, but also from year-to-year; we ensure that learning is continuous.

In Key Stage 1 the children are introduced to sound, duration, pitch, dynamics,  beat and rhythm, instruments and symbols, singing together, solo and ensemble work, timbre, tempo and dynamics throughout the year.

Classes get a recorder as the instrument they study alongside their main music lessons. There are also opt in options for both brass and violin taught by Suzuki.

In Key Stage 2 the children learn and embed their knowledge on pitch, rhythmic patterns, scales, melodies, ostinatos, cyclic patters, rounds, body percussion, time signatures, music notation, tempo, solo and ensemble work, lyrics, melody, musical process, western & non-western music and music technology throughout the year.

Children get a choice between music technology, brass, keyboard, clarinet and strings alongside their main music lessons. These lead to opportunities to then study this as a part of the after school music provision.

Opportunities for performance are provided for all key stage 2 children within the school, with regular concerts taking place to peers and parents in the hall. There are also numerous opportunities to attend music trips throughout the year.

Choirs
The aim of our choirs is to encourage and improve singing performance within the school as well as cultivating a singing culture the children are exposed to a varied repertoire of songs, cultural, classical as well as contemporary and are no strangers to complexed song structures, whether that be songs with 3 part harmonies or rounds in different languages. Our choirs regularly perform at shows, not only at the school but also across the borough and are used to performing to a crowd.

Young producers club
As part of our drive to encourage music production and composition in our young musicians, we run an after school Young producers' club in which children are taught how to use DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) and are given access to our music studio. They are encouraged to use their musical knowledge taught in music lessons and instrumental lessons to build their own songs, as well as given technical knowledge on how to use the software and hardware.

Band
Formerly our brass band, this was expanded to include other instrumentalists including our pianists and drummers. Students who are already learning an instrument will have the opportunity to join this exciting group of musicians who revel in playing collaboratively with a wide ranging repertoire!