Intent
The aim of music at Moorhill Primary School is to help children feel that they are musical, and develop a life-long love of music. To help us achieve this goal, we make use of the KAPOW music curriculum, focusing on the development of the skills, knowledge and understanding that children need in order to become confident performers, composers and listeners in a wide range of forms. We want children to be exposed to music from around the world and across generations, teaching them to appreciate and respect all traditions and communities and inspire them to continue with their musical knowledge after they leave the gate.
Through the KAPOW music curriculum, children will develop the musical skills of singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, improvising, composing and responding to music. Kapow’s music scheme of work enables pupils to confidently meet the end of key stage attainment targets outlined in the national curriculum and the aims of the scheme align with those in the national curriculum.
Through music, children at Moorhill will also experience our school values of teamwork, ambition, effort, respect and self belief. This will be embedded across all musical pathways including extra-curricular activities .
Implementation
Through the successful implementation of Kapow Primary’s music curriculum, we embed the key strands of musical teaching; performing, listening, composing, the history of music and the inter-related dimensions of music. Over the course of the scheme, children will be taught to sing fluently and expressively, and play tuned and untuned instruments accurately and with control. They will learn to recognise and name the interrelated dimensions of music – pitch, duration, tempo, timbre, structure, texture and dynamics – and use these confidently as part of their vocabulary. Music is timetables at a minimum of 30-45 minutes per week to ensure children have the opportunity to engage regularly and support spaced retrieval and learning processes.
In years 4/5, children will have the opportunity to learn to play an instrument in depth through the Entrust Whole School ensemble scheme. This allows children to develop mastery of an instrument and perform outside of school in the wider community. Children will gain valuable experience in implementing their musical knowledge and performing as musicians.
String subject knowledge and clarity to staff is imperative to deliver a highly effective and robust music curriculum. With Kapow primary, each unit contains explicit teacher videos to support subject knowledge acquisition and ongoing CPD, aiding teachers to deliver the music curriculum with confidence and effectiveness. The subject lead has developed a progression document for staff to use as part of their teaching to ensure they understand their targets for their year group and support in music assessment.
Kapow primary offers guidance and suggestions in adaptive teaching of music for each lesson. This aligns with our school improvement plan and helps us to ensure that music is accessible to all children.
All children have access to Rocksteady lessons to encourage and enable those who have a thirst for music can exercise this and thrive. All KS2 pupils have access to the choir and opportunities such as Christmas performances in the local community and Young Voices.
Impact
At Moorhill children have access to a clearly sequenced music curriculum, which allows them to be creative and express themselves, this develops our values of self-belief, teamwork and ambition. Music also develops the children’s understanding of culture, history and mutual respect.
We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:
- Pupil discussions and interviews about their learning,
- An assessment of standards achieved judged against the skills and knowledge outlined in our Curriculum map, (three times per year)
- Evidence of pupils work, gathered at the end of units.
By the time children leave Moorhill they will play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and play musical instruments with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression. Children will improvise and compose music for a range of purposes and listen with attention to detail. They will appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality music drawn from different traditions and composers.
Learners with Special Educational Needs
At Moorhill, we scaffold and adapt the learning in Music to enable all learners to succeed.
Learning is adapted through:
- Explicit teaching and modelling
- Scaffolded resources
- The use of concrete manipulatives
- Pictorial examples and representations of vocabulary
- Use of technological resources to support learning. For example: sound recording and videoing
- Frequent revisiting of music skills
- Children have the option of wearing ear defenders to support sensory needs
- Adult support