Welcome to music at St Peter's Catholic Academy. My name is Mrs Wallace and I am the music teacher at our school.

Intent

Music is a constant accompaniment to our lives, with access to digital music at the touch of our fingertips. Music can motivate and comfort us, inspire us in our thinking and reflect images and moods. It is our aim at St Peter's to explore the journey of musical communication; from a fleeting idea in the mind of a composer, through the precise and accurate organisation of sounds and instruments, to an expressive performance moment and appreciation by an audience. In doing this, children should develop a sense of place in musical history, know that music contributes to important occasions in their own lives and in other cultures around the world and have opportunities to develop their own composition, performance, listening and appraisal skills. Music at St Peter’s is a joyful experience and it is our intention that children’s learning of music remains a skill for life.

Implementation

Music lessons at St Peter’s engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. We follow the award-winning Charanga Music Scheme which follows the curriculum and draws on a wide range of resources. The vast majority of lessons are practical learning activities.

Our music curriculum ensures that all of our 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 improvise, 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.

In Key stage 1, the children are taught to use their voices expressively and creatively. They play tuned and untuned instruments musically, following a conductor’s instructions. They explore the inter-related dimensions of music and listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music. Composition tasks give them the opportunity to experiment with creating, selecting and combining sounds to imitate and communicate a particular creative idea.

Key stage 2 Pupils are taught to sing and play musically with increasing confidence, accuracy, fluency and expression. Class instrumental performance pieces are learned on the keyboard, ukulele and recorder, using both staff notation and tablature. For musical improvisation and composition tasks, children also have access to a wide variety of tuned and untuned percussion and are encouraged to use their own instruments. 

Music is also present across the curriculum supporting learning in areas such as maths, languages and dance. Songs are used to reinforce new learning of vocabulary in a range of subjects and are also an important part of our collective acts of worship. As a Catholic Academy, we use music for listening and singing in our masses and assemblies, spreading the gospel message.

Music is important in the wider life of the school. Extra-curricular musical activities provide even wider performance experiences across the collegiate and in the community including choir, peripatetic lessons and other musical clubs such as recorders, ukuleles and music technology.

Impact

Music has a high profile in our school community. All teachers are happy to lead and support musical activities. Participation in music develops well-being, promotes listening and develops concentration. We want to ensure that music is loved by children and adults across the school community, encouraging them to want to continue building on this wealth of musical ability, now and in the future.

 We know our children have progressed in music when:

• They can make connections between the music they have heard and their own life experiences and learning in other subjects
• They are confidently performing in front of their peers
• They are able to teach themselves or friends a new piece of music independently.
• They can organise sounds for a purpose, in a structure, communicating ideas effectively.