Intent
The intention of music at Palfrey Infant School is first and foremost to help children feel that they are musical and to develop a life-long love of music. We focus on developing the skills, knowledge and understanding that children need in order to become confident performers, composers and listeners. The music curriculum at Palfrey Infant School introduces the children to music from all around the world and across generations, teaching children to respect and appreciate the music of all traditions and communities.
Children will develop the musical skills of singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, developing improvising skills and begin composing music, listening and responding to music learning about the elements of music beginning with finding the pulse or beat of the music in fun and creative ways. Children will then build on these skills throughout their time at Palfrey Infant School looking at pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.
They will develop an understanding of the history and cultural context of the music that they listen to and learn how music can be written down. Through music, our curriculum helps children develop transferrable skills such as team-working, leadership, creative thinking, problem solving, decision making and presentation and performance skills. These skills are vital to children’s development as learners and have a wider application in their general lives outside and beyond school.
Through Charanga’s schemes of work they enable pupils to meet the end of Early Years Early Learning Goals for music statements in EAD and Key Stage attainment targets outlined in the EYFS Profile and National Curriculum.
They will learn about the elements of music beginning with finding the pulse of the music in fun and creative ways building onto thinking about rhythm and pitch and learning that music is structured, learning the technical vocabulary for all the elements as they progress.
Implementation
The implementation of the curriculum relates to how the learning is going to be delivered across Palfrey infant School, taking the intent of the learning and translating it into a progressive and effective curriculum.
At Palfrey Infant School our music curriculum is delivered through the support of the Charanga music scheme of work. It has a holistic approach to music, in which the individual strands are woven together to create engaging and enriching learning experiences. Those individual strands include performing, listening, composing, the history of music and the inter related dimensions of music. Each unit combines these strands within the cross-curricular topics designed to capture pupils’ imagination and encourage them to explore music enthusiastically. Through Charanga the children will learn to recognise and name the inter related dimensions of music – pitch, duration, tempo, timbre, structure, texture and dynamics – and use these expressively in their own improvisations and compositions.
Lessons allow children in Key Stage 1 develop their expertise in using a tuned instrument (glockenspiel).
The knowledge map shows the progression of skills and knowledge shows the skills that are taught within each year group and how those skills develop year on year to ensure attainment targets are securely met by the end of the Key Stage.
Charanga schemes of work follow a spiral curriculum model where previous skills and knowledge are returned to and built upon. Children progress in terms of tackling more complex tasks and doing more simple tasks better, as well as developing understanding and knowledge of the history of music and the interrelated dimensions of music.
In each lesson, pupils will actively participate in musical activities drawn from a range of styles and traditions, developing their musical skills and their understanding of how music works. Lessons incorporate a range of teaching strategies from independent tasks, paired and group work as well as improvisation and teacher-led performances. Lessons are ‘hands-on’ and incorporate movement and dance elements, as well as making cross curricular links with other areas of learning. Differentiated guidance is available for every lesson to ensure that lessons can be accessed by all pupils and opportunities to stretch pupils’ learning are available when required. Knowledge organisers for each unit support pupils in building a foundation of factual knowledge by encouraging recall of key facts and vocabulary. Strong subject knowledge is vital for staff to be able to deliver a highly effective and robust music curriculum. CPD support is available through the Charanga website and further CPD opportunities can also be found on the National College. Charanga is created with the understanding that many teachers do not feel confident in delivering the music curriculum and to ensure that staff feel supported to deliver lessons of a high standard that ensures pupil progression.
Currently music is delivered by Level 4 TAs to ensure that lessons are consistent and skills progress through the school. There is a variety of untuned percussion available for lessons and some tuned percussion including glockenspiels where the aim is to build up so that a whole class has access to glockenspiels at the same time. We have a variety of live music that comes into perform to the children and invite the parents in to come and watch performances of their children. Children have all had the opportunity to take on extra curricular lessons where they can learn an instrument, unfortunately there was no uptake in this club that was provided. Other clubs include choir and learning to play the glockenspiel.
Impact
The impact of teaching music at Palfrey Infant School relates to how staff identify that the curriculum is having a positive impact on pupils’ learning, how to identify gaps in their learning and how to fill these. Teaching music with the support of Charanga will see an increase in the love of music across the school. Lessons are planned with detail to support all levels of subject knowledge. Knowledge organisers provide staff with a highly visual record of the key learning from each unit, encouraging recall of practical skills, key knowledge and vocabulary.
After the implementation of Charanga, pupils should leave Palfrey Infant School equipped with a range of skills to enable them to succeed in KS2 and to be able to enjoy music throughout their lives.
The expected impact of following the Charanga scheme of work is that children will: