Music at Fawbert and Barnard’s Primary School

At Fawbert and Barnard’s Primary school music is an integral part of our curriculum.  We have a long traditional of musical achievements, and it is the heart of the school.

Intent

At Fawbert and Barnard’s Primary School, we believe that high quality teaching and our well developed curriculum allows children the opportunity to gain a deep understanding of music.  This gives them the skills to perform and compose, and in turn explore and express their own creative potential. 

Children will learn the basic elements of music, such as rhythm, pulse, timbre, pitch and dynamics.  They will learn this through listening to high quality recordings where they will learn to discriminate and analyse a wide range of music. Playing and singing allows them to then directly experience these elements and ultimately shape and control them through their compositional work. Alongside the practical skills, music requires children to build on a number of essential life skills, which will impact their ability to learn and develop emotionally.  At Fawbert and Barnard’s we work hard to promote children’s growth mindset and our music curriculum is designed to develop this further. Listening, is a vital skill and underpins every part of the music curriculum.  There is much research to show that regular high quality music lessons and participation in music making has a very positive impact on children’s ability to learn. Much of the work that the children will do will require them to work in groups.  This demands that children are able to work co-operatively and learn to support, and accept help from each other.  Learning to play an instrument, performing and creating our own music all has an element of risk taking, and children, when well supported, will learn to take those risks and build up a resilience to initial set backs.  Our curriculum is designed so that all children are able to access it at their level.

Implementation

1. A well designed curriculum and careful planning, building on skills each year, allowing the children to progress at their own pace. There are cross curricular links to topics being learnt, that make their music learning more relevant.  This is supported by a music subject leader who has music as their specialism.
2. A mixture of group and individual work allowing children to support each other and develop resilience and confidence.
3. The children will have the opportunity to learn instruments in every year group in KS1 and KS2.
4. Assessment throughout the year.  This will ensure that children gain the support they may need or can be challenged if they excel in music.
5. Visiting musicians to help enhance and deepen children’s appreciation and understanding of music.
6. A raised profile of musical performance throughout the school, to make performing the norm and teach children that performances, of all standards are equally valued.
7. Opportunities for children to learn additional instruments, such as piano, drums, guitar, and clarinet from visiting peripatetic teachers. (The fee for this is greatly reduced for children who receive Pupil Premium).  Please click on the highlighted links for a flavour of what it taught.  We also have Rock and Pop band lessons available through Rocksteady.
8. The opportunity to join a well established KS2 choir, which has performed at a number of venues outside the school. KS1 also has the opportunity to be part of a singing festival in the summer term.  There is ukulele and recorder club.  Children of all standards are welcomed. We are currently working on providing song writing opportunities for the children in KS2.
9. The school is well resourced with instruments and learning with ipads and technology which is integral to their lessons.

Impact: 

Our Music Curriculum is of a high quality, well-thought-out and is planned to demonstrate progression. If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress. In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes.
• Assessment through a comparative assessment system linked to the skills progression grids.
• A celebration of learning for each class, which demonstrates progression across the school – mainly through performances, both informal and formal.
• Pupil discussions about their learning; which includes discussion of their thoughts, ideas, processing and evaluations of work.