Music

Music is taught weekly throughout the school from Nursery to Year 6, by a specialist music teacher.  We sing, compose, learn instruments, play as an ensemble, listen and appraise. 

Our music curriculum inspires a love of music, develops our pupils’ talent as musicians, and increases our pupils’ self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement.

We Sing:

• remembering songs and sequences of words
• matching and controlling the pitch we hear
•  with expression, phrasing and dynamics
•  in unison, in rounds, canons and harmonies
• a variety of songs from different cultures
• as an ensemble, listening to each other, and following a conductor

We Compose:

• by exploring sound, timbre and structure
• by choosing and ordering sounds
• by making up our own words or actions to familiar songs
• by improvising simple chants or question and answer phrases
• by creating musical conversations and record them with notation
• by creating melodies and using chords as an accompaniment
• by creating soundscapes and ensemble pieces

• play tuned and untuned instruments musically
• listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music
• and experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the inter-related dimensions of music.

We Learn to Play Instruments:

• Nursery through to Year 1 play a range of untuned percussion and explore melody using xylophones and other tuned percussion

•  Year 2 learn the Ukulele

• Year 3 learn Recorder

•  Year 4 consolidate our skills on Ukulele and the Recorder

•  Year 5 learn Steel Pans

•  Year 6 learn Guitar

  Whilst developing our instrumental skills, we learn to play with accuracy and control.  We become familiar with various methods of notation, from dot notation and graphic scores to staff notation.

We Perform as an Ensemble:

• following the conductor
• keeping the beat
• maintaining our part
• listening to the whole to make sure we are blending in

We Listen and Appraise:

• Listen to a wide range of music
• using musical language to describe what we can hear
• taking ideas from what we hear to help improve our own compositions and performances

We Also:

• hold weekly Singing Assemblies for all phases
• Run a Young Voices Choir for pupils in years 1 – 3
• Run a Chamber Choir for pupils in years 4 – 6
• Offer three after-school clubs: a Ukulele Club, a Steel Pans Club and a Composition Club
• Offer 1-1 piano tuition in school, with our peripatetic piano teacher

If you are interested in 1-1 piano tuition please email Joanna Fyvie