Music
‘Music is a world within itself, with a language we all understand.’
Stevie Wonder.
Here a St James', we are an inclusive family, and, as stated above, music is a language we all can understand. The vision for Music is that every child is exposed to high quality music throughout their school life, in different contexts such as in class, a music lesson, cross curricula, in assembly or in the playground. We want children to adopt a lifelong love of music, learn from it, enjoy it and have confidence in making and performing it. In performing, children will build on skills such as resilience, bravery and teamwork, developing a well-rounded child. We want to open our children’s eyes and minds to music across the world and in their own community, and from different times in history, telling the story of the past and present. We want them to explore how music can make you feel and how powerful it is, how it connects us, joins us, showing no prejudice or limitations. In following our vision children will gain confidence, develop communication skills and improve their emotional wellbeing.
Music lessons are enjoyable, interactive and allow children of all abilities to join in and harvest a passion for music through our chosen scheme Charanga, which supports our vision. The children participate in singing, tuned and unturned percussion work, composition, and listening to live and recorded music. Children are taught the correct terminology from the beginning and will revisit and expand on this each year.
Children are able to have music lessons in school and children who receive Pupil Premium may be able to use this funding to learn an instrument. The school also funds the local authority music service to provide a programme led by specialist music teachers and musicians. The school has daily singing in assembly every afternoon which sets the children off in good spirits and attitude for the rest of the day, a highlight of the day for many and a joy for visitors who join us! Within this they have singing assemblies to develop skills of how to sing with a sense of pitch and melody. They are taught how to listen to each other, sing in rounds and harmonies, and build up a repertoire of songs. They also have access to choir club, which many children, of all ages attend in their lunch hour.
Once a year there is also a summer concert where the school take to the field and entertain the audience with their beautiful singing voices, something which is talked about!
we supplement our planned curriculum with lots of additional opportunities. These include having music lessons taught by specialist teachers, and recently children have enjoyed bespoke music projects based on Australian stories, learnt to play the steel pans and ukuleles, and we even learnt how to play the didgeridoo!
10 ways Music enhances our children's education
The National Curriculum for Music aims to ensure that all pupils:
- perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians
- learn to sing and to use their voices, to create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, use technology appropriately and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence
- understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the inter-related dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.
