Music

Teaching Music Lessons in SMMJ

“In the same way that we teach children literacy and numeracy to prepare them for adult life, we must also give them the musical tools they need for a lifetime of music-making and enjoyment.” (The DfE 2022) 

At our school, we endeavour to follow the strands of the Key Stage 2 National Curriculum.

Music enables our children to explore their creativity, to develop a love of music, to become  musicians. We aim to increase their self-confidence and sense of achievement in our lessons. Children are taught how to use their voices and their bodies to create their own music and celebrate their achievements at every musical opportunity. We enable our pupils to express their personal, emotional, social and cultural identity through our lessons.

How We Teach Music

Music is taught at St. Margaret Mary’s Junior School using a published scheme called Kapow. We have been using Kapow as a scheme for Art for some time now. Staff and our children can access the scheme easily online -  it  has been carefully selected and created for all of our staff to access regardless of their musical backgrounds and abilities.

In our school, each unit is taught over a 5 week period to enable 6 units to be taught across that school year. Each year group builds upon the key stands in the music National Curriculum which is set out below.We teach music regularly so that children can remember and build upon their learning. Skills are built upon throughout year 3 to 6 and are revisited. 

The scheme enables our children to develop their own knowledge of key musical terms and basic musicianship skills. These are supported with videos for staff and children, pictures, examples of work to be taught and both lyric and sheet music to accompany lessons. 

Pupils can access music using our music room with resources to enable them to access the curriculum and their own classrooms including both tuned and untuned percussion. 

Music Appreciation 

We also ensure that children listen to a wide range of music with awareness of composers, genres and instruments and that they are exposed to literature that enables them to understand about the lives and works of key composers in our music book spine. 

Composition

In lessons children are given the opportunities to improvise, compose and notate their own music using symbols, eventually leading to the exposure of musical notation. Composing  leads to the understanding how music is used to represent ideas and emotions, enabling our pupils to develop their creativity and building their self-belief and self-confidence.

Singing and Performance

Pupils at our school are given many opportunities to sing. We sing in lessons, in our “Prayer and Liturgy” and to perform in front of live audiences such as our “Harvest Festival” and “Nativity Plays.” This enables our pupils to recall their musical knowledge and skills and demonstrate their abilities through performance. 

Assessment

Some aspects of some of our lessons are recorded so that pupils can listen to the music that they have created to evaluate and assess it. 

“Music has a power of forming the character and should therefore be introduced into the education of the young.” (Aristotle)