Music  – Intent, Implementation and Impact Statement

WDPS Vision Statement

At WDPS, we believe that when children are given the opportunity to foster a love of challenge, adventure and creativity in and beyond the classroom - developing skills that will equip them for all walks of life - they will become life-long learners with resilience, passion and a thirst for knowledge.

Intent

The National Curriculum for music aims to ensure that all pupils:
• 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 W.D.P.S.  the intention is that children gain a firm understanding of what music is through listening, singing, playing, evaluating, analysing, and composing across a wide variety of historical periods, styles, traditions, and musical genres. Our objective at W.D.P.S. is to develop 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.

We provide an environment where lessons foster and develop the creative process, while also ensuring that children have at least a basic grounding in the way that music has been written for hundreds of years. We want children to know that the language of music has no geographical barriers, and playing and singing music can bring together people of all races in a common activity. Through skilled specialist teaching, and links to other subjects, children will learn that composing, performing or listening to music can be an exciting, moving and spiritual experience. We encourage them to reflect on how music can have an effect on people’s moods, senses and quality of life. We aim to give all children in the school opportunities to sing, compose and record their own music and to perform to audiences of fellow pupils, parents, friends and the wider community, as appropriate. We value music of all cultures, and will expose the children to a wide range of recorded music and provide opportunities to experience the excitement of live performances.

Life Skills and Resilience  

Lifelong learners

At WDPS our Music curriculum develops a thirst for learning and creativity in our children. The curriculum is enhanced with specialist music tuition, educational trips to perform at local venues and access to a wide range of musical instruments.

WDPS Core Values- Positive Contributors and Citizens

Through our Music curriculum children will come to understand the complexity of people's lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as the child's own identity and challenges of their time.

When studying a musical genre or composer, they will demonstrate their curiosity by asking questions. Through experimenting with different instruments and musical genres and will grow in knowledge and confidence as they learn to appraise compose and perform. They will be open minded as they view musical preferences from different perspectives.

Academic Commitment

At West Denton Primary School we make music an enjoyable learning experience.

    We encourage children to participate in a variety of musical experiences through which we aim to build up the confidence of all children. Singing lies at the heart of good music teaching. Our teaching focuses on developing the children’s ability to sing in tune and with other people. Through singing songs, children learn about the structure and organisation of music. We teach them to listen to and appreciate different forms of music. As children get older, we expect them to maintain their concentration for longer, and to listen to more extended pieces of music. Children develop descriptive skills in music lessons when learning about how music can represent feelings and emotions. We teach children to make music together, to understand musical notation, and to compose pieces.

Implementation

The music curriculum ensures students sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate. This is embedded in the classroom activities as well as the weekly singing assemblies, various concerts and performances and the learning of instruments. The elements of music are taught in the classroom lessons so that children are able to use some of the language of music to dissect it, and understand how it is made, played, appreciated and analysed. In the classroom students learn how to play an instrument, from tuned and untuned percussion instruments to wind instruments. In doing so understand the different principle of each method of creating notes, as well as how to read basic music notation. They also learn how to compose focusing on different dimensions of music, which in turn feeds their understanding when listening, playing, or analysing music. Composing or performing using body percussion and vocal sounds is also part of the curriculum, which develops the understanding of musical elements without the added complexity of an instrument.

Subject Progression grids across the two year rolling programme cross-curricular music opportunities are taught and focused on clear skills development. Subscription to Charanga and resources support this. Each Phase has a half term of music instrument tuition delivered by the Newcastle Music Service (African drumming, Bamboo Tamboo, Animal Pagent, pocket trumpets etc).

At West Denton Primary School we follow the Skills Progression Document for Music in Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, which specifically maps the key skills from Key Stage 1 ( Phase 1) , Lower Key Stage 2 ( Phase 2)  and Upper Key stage 3 (Phase 3).

Impact

Whilst in school, children have access to a varied programme, which allows students to discover areas of strength, as well as areas they might like to improve upon. The integral nature of music and the learner creates enables students to 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 students 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 have an understanding of how to further develop skills less known to them, should they ever develop an interest in their lives.

At the end of each unit of work, we make a summative judgement about the achievement of each pupil and input these into the WDPS Foundation Subjects Tracker.  At this point teachers decide upon a ‘best fit’ judgement as to whether the pupil has achieved and embedded the expected learning goals, exceeded expectations or is still working towards the goals.  These decisions are based on the professional knowledge and judgement that teachers possess about the progress of each pupil, developed over the previous three terms, which allows an informed and holistic judgement of attainment to be made.   Achievement against the learning goals for history at the end of the year is used as the basis of reporting progress to parents and carers.