Music

Intent

Here at The Avenue, we want to inspire and ignite a passion for all things musical, ensuring it is an integral part of school life. 

Our intention is to enable all children to experience all the facets of music through a creative and practical curriculum. This will be achieved through developing an understanding of the elements of music, practical music making through the voice and a variety of instruments, composing and improvising music and taking inspiration from across a wide variety of historical periods, styles, traditions and cultures.

We are committed to ensuring that every child understands the importance and value of music within their own life, across the wider community and around the world. Being able use their musical skills, knowledge and experiences to immerse themselves in music, in a variety of different contexts and the opportunity to perform, build and develop their practical musical skills on a regular basis. We understand that music is not something to be ‘achieved’ but a multifaceted subject that takes time and nurture. 

Implementation

We are very fortunate at the Avenue, to have a professional musician who works with teachers and pupils in different areas across the school. Music teaching at The Avenue delivers the requirements of the National and Model Music Curriculum through a tailor made programme that gives regular opportunities for practical music making. This is a constantly evolving curriculum which takes into consideration the needs of our children and their development as they progress throughout the years. 

We understand that children develop their musical language best when they can apply it through practical music making. They use procedural and declarative knowledge and make progress through technical, constructive and expressive application.

Each unit of work has an on-going musical learning focus and lessons usually follow a specific learning sequence:

•         Understanding and Listening

•         Notation and the Elements of Music
          (Pulse, Rhythm, Pitch, Tempo, Dynamics, Texture, Harmony, Expression)

•         Singing 

•         Playing instruments

•         Improvisation and Composition 

•         Perform 

Our progression model follows the same learning sequence to ensure all interrelated elements of music are repeated and embedded as the children move through the school.

We offer extra-curricular opportunities, including a school choir and instrumental club which enables further opportunities for musical expansion and development. 

Within Early Years, music is an integral part of children’s learning journey. Rhyme and rhythm are utilised throughout the learning of phonics, handwriting and mathematics. Children learn a wide range of songs and rhymes and develop skills for performing together. Singing and music making opportunities are used frequently to embed learning, develop musical awareness and to demonstrate how music can be used to express feelings. 

Resource base children follow the Charanga Anyone Can Play and Charanga’s Model Music curriculum schemes which run alongside our mainstream curriculum with the same attention to the elements of music and regular topic links to enable cross curricular learning opportunities with other classes. It is a holistic and creative scheme which enables all children to develop their musical skills at a secure and supported pace. Opportunities are also available for children to join mainstream music classes to develop their instrument skills further as well as access to after school clubs such as Show Choir and Instrument Club.

Impact

Our music curriculum is planned to demonstrate progression and build-on and embed key skills. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills in the different musical components and teaching of vocabulary also forms part of the units of work. We know that our curriculum has impact when the children are demonstrating the knowledge and skills in lessons, enjoying sharing and expressing their musicality on a regular basis and continuing their musical journeys independently through access to extra-curricular clubs and digital resources such as Charanga Music World and Charanga Yumu.

We monitor this across the year on a regular basis through:

•          Pupil discussions and interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).

•          Monitoring of music lesson delivery through formative assessment.

•          Photo and video evidence of the pupils' practical learning.

•          Level of uptake of our music extra-curricular sessions and digital platforms

Upon leaving The Avenue, our children will have been exposed to and experienced a wide range of musical opportunities on a variety of instruments. This will allow them to progress into KS3 with a solid foundation of musical skills, take peripatetic lessons at secondary level and continue to have a lifelong passion for music.

Music ProgressionMusic Skills and knowledge by unitMusic vocabulary