‘We Are Musicians’ at Powers Hall Academy 

Music forms an invaluable part of children’s education and well-being. Not only can music bring enjoyment through listening, singing, or playing, it can provide a lifelong pastime or even career. More importantly in education, it offers a host of other benefits, such as: helping to develop language, reasoning, memorisation, emotional intelligence, pattern recognition, auditory skills and imagination; promoting craftsmanship; increasing co-ordination; improving self-esteem and confidence; presenting a means for some children to remain engaged in school or can simply be relaxing!

Intent

The intention of our music curriculum is first and foremost to help children to 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. Our curriculum introduces 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, improvising and composing music, and listening and responding to music. 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 transferable 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.

Implementation

In our classrooms, children experience a growing appreciation and understanding of Music in its many forms whilst building performance skills, via a progressive, exciting, contemporary and relevant, music scheme offered by Kapow Primary. The scheme enables pupils to 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.

Kapow Primary’s Music scheme takes a holistic approach to music, in which the individual strands below are woven together to create engaging and enriching learning experiences:

• Performing
• Listening
• Composing
• The history of music
• The inter-related dimensions of music

Each five-lesson unit combines these strands within a cross-curricular topic designed to capture pupils’ imagination and encourage them to explore music enthusiastically. Over the course of the scheme, children will be taught how 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 expressively in their own improvisations and compositions.

Instrumental scheme

The DfE’s Model Music Curriculum 2021 states that:

‘In Years 3 or 4, it is recommended that each class should start a whole-class instrumental programme lasting a minimum of one term...Opportunities for development should continue beyond the mandatory term.’

At Powers Hall Academy, pupils in Years 3-6 follow a progressive Instrumental scheme of 6 units allowing them the opportunity to develop their expertise in using a tuned instrument. Each unit of lessons focuses on music from a different part of the world and features a bespoke piece of music composed specifically for the scheme and includes sheet music, performance and backing tracks. These lessons will be taught by our music specialist during Key Skills mornings.

The Kapow Primary scheme follows the spiral curriculum model with the following key principles in mind:

• Cyclical: Pupils return to the same skills and knowledge again and again during their time in primary school.
• Increasing depth: Each time a skill or area of knowledge is revisited it is covered with greater depth.
• Prior knowledge: Upon returning to a skill, prior knowledge is utilised so pupils can build upon previous foundations, rather than starting again.

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, staff, and other musical notations, as well as the interrelated dimensions of music and more.

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.

We embrace every opportunity to weave music into the school day and it is featured into many others lessons, such as History and Maths, as an enjoyable opportunity to extend children’s knowledge. Alongside music clubs, assemblies, productions and performances, our teachers are encouraged to embrace and include music into day-to-day school life: to calm, educate, entertain, stimulate, escape, engage or inspire!

Impact

The impact of our music curriculum can be constantly monitored through both formative and summative assessment opportunities. Each lesson includes guidance to support teachers in assessing pupils against the learning objectives and at the end of each unit there is often a performance element where teachers can make a summative assessment of pupils’ learning. Knowledge organisers for each unit support pupils by providing a highly visual record of the key learning from the unit, encouraging recall of practical skills, key knowledge and vocabulary.

After the implementation of Kapow Primary Music, pupils should leave primary school equipped with a range of skills to enable them to succeed in their secondary education and to be able to enjoy and appreciate music throughout their lives.

The expected impact of following the Kapow Primary Music scheme of work is that children will:

• Be confident performers, composers and listeners and will be able to express themselves musically at and beyond school.

• Show an appreciation and respect for a wide range of musical styles from around the world and will understand how music is influenced by the wider cultural, social, and historical contexts in which it is developed.

• Understand the ways in which music can be written down to support performing and composing activities.

• Demonstrate and articulate an enthusiasm for music and be able to identify their own personal musical preferences.

• Meet the end of key stage expectations outlined in the national curriculum for Music.