Music
Intent
Our overall intention is to nurture and develop our six qualities of learning which enable all children to shine…for life! We nurture and encourage creative, kind and resilient learners who are reflective, inquisitive and determined in all they do. Our intention is for learners at St Levan to know more and remember more in Music by appreciating, performing and experimenting in a range of ways.
To think like musicians, learners at St Levan focus on our three subject specific characteristics which are:
Appreciation
I can appreciate music from different times and places
Performance
- I can perform
Experimentation
- I can experiment different ways to make music
These three characteristics are woven throughout our Music curriculum and are built upon as children progress through the school. This ensures that children acquire the skills and knowledge they need to succeed, expressed in concepts and language with which they have already become familiar.
Implementation
We provide an engaging, characterful and balanced curriculum for all.
Our inclusive curriculum is carefully planned to allow for progress for all pupils in our two mixed age classes. We recognise the challenges of teaching a progression within a subject to a mixed age class and, having undertaken our own research and consulted subject specialists and organisations, developed our own pedagogy and created what we believe is the best fit for our setting. With a commitment to the removal of barriers to learning and participation, we offer high quality teaching and appropriate differentiation to meet the needs of all. Using our rolling programme (see our Curriculum Offer page), we teach Music through termly topics and focus on musical appreciation, performance, composition and theoretical knowledge.
Please find below our Music Curriculum Progression documents as well as how we differentiate our Music provision for pupils with SEND:
We interconnect learning opportunities with an enriched environment to promote a love of learning and the outdoors.
Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. A high quality music education should engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. (National Curriculum)
To allow for an engaging, characterful and balanced curriculum, Music at St Levan incorporates trips where we perform for others as well as trips where we can watch others perform. Most recently, the children have sung for the spouses of the G7, visited the pantomime at the Hall for Cornwall and written and created their own pantomime for families to enjoy. Next year, many of us will sing again in Songfest with a live band. We are lucky to be part of such a creative community and flourishing music scene in Cornwall and take every opportunity to engage with different music making.
We ensure children are supported within a kind and caring community which enables them to progress and flourish.
Assessment
At St Levan, we use assessment in three different ways across all subjects.
Assessment for learning (AfL)
This assessment is formative, ongoing and informs classroom practice and future planning. Through careful observation, listening and questioning, teachers glean what learners know and can do and plan next steps accordingly. For example, in music, if a pupil talks about dynamics in terms of louds and softs, the next step could be to use more subject specific vocabulary such as forte and piano.
Assessment as learning (AaL)
This assessment is about how pupils self-regulate their own learning and develop metacognitive skills. Through structured peer and self-assessment activities, pupils understand their own needs as a learner and reflect on their own next steps. By taking ownership of their own learning, this can help pupils to know more and remember more. For example, in Music, pupils may self-assess against their WALTs and WILFs and highlight what they can do or do something similar against specific design criteria during evaluation.
Assessment of learning (AoL)
This assessment is summative, at the end of a topic and, in Music, pupils will produce some sort of finished piece of work, for example, a composition using a simple ostinato.
Impact
By the end of KS2, we aim for our pupils to play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and playing musical instruments with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression. Improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the inter-related dimensions of music. Listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory. Use and understand staff and other musical notations Appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians. To have develop an understanding of the history of music. (National Curriculum)
Our Music Curriculum is planned to enable progression and build on and embed current skills working towards the expected National Curriculum outcomes. Our termly assessments in music enable us to identify gaps and trends in the curriculum and pupil attainment. We also measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods: pupil discussions and interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice), photo, recording and video evidence of the pupils' practical learning.