Intent
The National Curriculum for music aims to ensure that all children:
- Perform, listen to, review and evaluate music.
- Be taught to sing, create and compose music.
- Understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated.
At Bethersden Primary School, children gain a firm understanding of what music is through listening, singing, playing, evaluating, analysing, composing and performing across a wide variety of historical periods, styles, traditions, and musical genres. We do this through the UK’s leading Scheme to teach the National Curriculum for Music ‘Charanga’. Charanga is a scheme ‘passionate about children’s music learning and its potential to help them grow up as kind, curious, and open-minded young people, who are sensitive and knowledgeable about music and the arts.’
In addition, at Bethersden we are committed to developing a curiosity for the subject, as well as an understanding and acceptance of the validity and importance of all types of music, and an unbiased respect for the role that music may wish to be expressed in any person’s life. We are committed to ensuring children understand the value and importance of music in the wider community and are able to use their musical skills, knowledge and experiences to involve themselves in music, in a variety of different contexts.
Implementation
The music curriculum at Bethersden ensures children sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate. This is embedded in the classroom through the delivery of our scheme ‘Charanga’ as well as weekly singing assemblies, music lessons from experienced professionals, opportunities to listen to and experience music and after school clubs.
Charanga supports our teachers to deliver music lessons week by week from EYFS to Year 6. In the classroom children will be composing and performing using body percussion and vocal sounds as part of the curriculum, which develops the understanding of musical elements without the added complexity of an instrument. As our children’s musical skills and experiences develop they will learn to play a variety of instruments including the recorder and the glockenspiel. In doing so the children will understand the different principles of each method of creating notes, as well as how to read basic music notation. Children will also learn how to compose, focusing on different dimensions of music, which in turn feeds their understanding when listening, playing, or analysing music. Singing is also an important part of the music curriculum we provide at Bethersden. Our children will learn to sing as part of a choir with and without accompaniment including rehearsing and learning songs from memory.
Impact
Whilst in school, children have access to a varied programme including Charanga and wider opportunities, which allows them to discover areas of strength, as well as areas they might like to improve upon. The integral nature of music and the learner creates an enormously rich palette from which a child may access fundamental abilities such as: achievement, self-confidence, interaction with and awareness of others, and self-reflection. Music will also develop an understanding of culture and history, both in relation to children individually, as well as ethnicities from across the world. Children are able to enjoy music in as many ways as they choose – either as listener, creator or performer. They can dissect music and comprehend its parts. They can sing and feel a pulse. They understand how to further develop skills less known to them, should they ever develop an interest in their lives.
