Making Music Makes Us

At St Mary’s Primary School, our music curriculum intends to inspire creativity, self-expression and encourages our children to develop their musical journey- they learn the technical, constructive and expressive pillars of music in an incrementally designed curriculum.  We want pupils to enjoy learning a tuned/ untuned instrument and giving pupils the opportunities to experience the joy of connecting and working with others. Time is given in the curriculum to practice, repeat and refine. St Mary’s has particularly focused on two areas to build development- singing and learning to play a recorder. Quality music learning has been a priority for all including Senior leaders, teachers and teaching assistants. We hope to foster a life-long love of music by exposing children to diverse musical experiences, quality music lessons and igniting a passion for music. By listening and responding to different musical styles, finding their voices as singers and performers and as composers, it will all enable them to become confident, creative and reflective musicians, continuing to sing and play instruments into Secondary school and beyond.

 

Implementation : How we teach music?

We enjoy teaching and learning a range of musical styles and instruments at St Mary’s School. Staff follow the Lancashire system, which has the National Curriculum as it’s basis. Music learning will be themed through this, into discrete individual subjects. Children gain 3 types of knowledge: Tacit knowledge gained through experience; Procedural knowledge exercised in a performance of a task and declarative knowledge storing musical facts and information into their long term memory.

At St Mary’s we aim for there to be 3 pillars of progression:

  1. Technical: beginning from EYFS- the curriculum is developed to enable pupils to develop control over the sound they produce in weekly practice sessions. They will learn a range of representational systems such as graphic notation and this will build from eyfs.
  2. Constructive: Prior learning will always be taken into consideration and built upon. Examples and styles of musical concepts and terminology will be embedded into the curriculum- there are strong links to other subjects such as Science. ( For example the year four learn about sound and make pitched instruments).
  3. Expressive: Pupils will have many opportunities during the week to listen to music and will be given technical tasks to develop their musical expression.

On Wednesdays the children participate in a weekly singing practise. All children have over half an hour music learning with the school’s music teacher on Wednesday. EYFS, and KS1 focus on percussion and are learning some untuned instruments. All the junior classes have a recorder of their own and are learning this. The teachers are also learning the recorder and all staff have a weekly 5 minute cpd in music from Mrs Leaney in the staff briefing. Teachers also teach music from the lancashire medium term plan, which is in addition to the music teaching from Mrs Leaney.

All of  the children also have the opportunity to learn the guitar,  Ukele and piano, both through the Peripatetic music teachers.  EYFS also have continious provision activities that are musical- including an outdoor stage.

All children have the opportunity for flute, piano and guitar lessons in school, which are paid by parents.

Children also have the opportunity to join the School Choir and rehearse on Wednesday lunchtimes. They participate in the yearly Catholic Schools Menphys Carol Concert at Leicester De Montford hall. The school also encourages children to use and demonstrate their musical talents in the talent show, achievement assemblies, plays and nativities and end of year musical demonstration.

Pupils can choose a range of music to listen to in the liturgies and celebration assemblies.

St Mary’s music Development Plan 24 25 Academic Year St Mary’s Music Development Plan 24 25

Music Long term plan   MUSIC LONG TERM PLAN 24 25 Academic Year

Music Medium Term plan Music Medium Term Plan 24 25

Skills and knowledge progression      Key Skills In Music

Music Key Skills:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IMPACT

Pupils enjoy music at St Mary’s school. Several children take Trinity music exams and carry on learning instruments in secondary school and beyond. All pupils in school have the opportunity to perform pieces of music- either as an ensemble piece or solo at the end of year music celebration and through performances throughout the year. Pupils also go out into the community such as singing in local care homes or at the supermarkets to the community. Pupils play in the Achievement assemblies weekly or in the Remembrance Liturgies. Pupils make good progress in their music which is assessed Twice a year in December and June and this is reported to parents. In most lessons there are low stake testing to consolidate learning.