Intent

At Henbury View First School, we value the importance of Music. At Henbury, our music curriculum intends to inspire creativity, self-expression and encourages our children on their musical journeys as well as giving them opportunities to connect with others. We aim to foster a lifelong love of music by exposing them to diverse musical experiences and igniting a passion for music. By listening and responding to different musical styles, finding their voices as singers and performers and as composers, all will enable them to become confident, reflective musicians. We encourage children to participate in a variety of musical experiences through which to develop a love of music and develop their talent as musicians, and in turn increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. We focus on gaining the children’s ability to 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. They will 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. Understanding and exploring how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the inter-related dimensions, is the basis of our curriculum, and ensuring that these are progressive and continually recapped allows the children to build upon their knowledge and reflect on their understanding.

Implementation

The teaching and implementation of the Music Curriculum at Henbury View First School is based on the National Curriculum in KS1 and KS2 and Development Matters in EYFS to ensure a well-structured approach to this creative subject. Our curriculum is organised into 3 ‘pillars’ of musical understanding; technical, constructive and expressive. Technical understanding is gained by playing instruments and singing, translating their intentions successfully into sound. This involves large amounts of practice that enables the children to develop reading fluency at the level set out in the curriculum. Constructive understanding is covered through knowing how musical components and how they can be put together, and expressive understanding is developed by discovering the quality, meaning and creativity in music. Curriculum content is also carefully sequenced to ensure children gain tacit (knowledge gained through experience), procedural (knowledge exercised in the performance of a task) and declarative (facts or information stored in the memory, e.g. eras, styles, composers and performers) knowledge.

The music curriculum ensures children sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate. This is embedded in classroom activities as well as weekly singing assemblies, various concerts and performances, the learning of instruments, and the joining of musical ensembles. The elements of music are taught in classrooms, with vocabulary as a key component, so that children are able to use the language of music to discuss it, and understand how it is made, played, appreciated and analysed. In the classroom, students learn how to play various un-tuned and tuned percussion instruments and individual classes have the opportunity to learn specific instruments. Year 2 learn to play the ocarina and Year 3 complete a 10-week Samba programme with the Dorset Music Service. In doing so, they understand the different principles of creating notes, as well as how to devise and read their own musical scores and basic music notation. They also learn how to compose focussing on different dimensions of music, which in turn feeds their understanding when listening, playing, or analysing music.

Key Threads

At Henbury View, we have key threads that run through and across year groups. These will continually be revisited and explored across the academic journey of a child at Henbury. Each thread is underpinned by key vocabulary and knowledge that will be explicitly taught in Music. The key threads are: