At Hester’s Way Primary, we use the Music Express Scheme to teach music which correlates to the National Curriculum.
We have a music/drama room which allows a space to teach and learn music, with instruments. It is also important for our pupils to have music experience and opportunity.
Singing is a large part of our school community and music curriculum. When able to come together as a school, we have singing assemblies and plan long termly performances for visitors, to celebrate the children’s learning. We subscribe to Out of the Ark for up-to-date songs, shared on our hall screen.
Events are planned for theme or school celebrations such as a steel drum workshop, the children have taken part in Young Voices, recorded their own CD with a church funded Sing Up collaboration and took part in the Cheltenham Festivals “Across the Sky”. We also have close links with Wentworth Court elderly resident’s home, with The Everyman Theatre leading on intergenerational projects involving song, music and dance.
“Music is to the soul, as food is to the body” – Music is fun, relaxing, motivating and energizing. It has a profound impact on our mind and bodies. We are also aware of the strong links between music, rhythm, rhyme and language, with communication being a school priority.
We encourage, motivate and teach our pupils to “Aspire, Believe, Care and Achieve” in all that they do but also to experience and have opportunities in a broad and balanced curriculum, so that later in life they can make positive decisions, life choices and contributions to the community and society. Music enables pupils to work on and develop all of our school values:
Perseverance, Confidence, Resilience, Determination, Pride and Independence.
Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. A high-quality music education should 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. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon.
The national curriculum for music aims to ensure that all 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 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 interrelated dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations
By the end of each key stage, pupils are expected to know, apply and understand the matters, skills and processes specified in the relevant programme of study
Key stage 1
Pupils should be taught to:
• use their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes
• play tuned and untuned instruments musically
• listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music
• experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the interrelated dimensions of music
Key stage 2
Pupils should be taught to sing and play musically with increasing confidence and control. They should develop an understanding of musical composition, organising and manipulating ideas within musical structures and reproducing sounds from aural memory.
Pupils should be taught to:
• play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and playing musical instruments with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression
• improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the interrelated dimensions of music
• listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory
• use and understand staff and other musical notations
• appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians
• develop an understanding of the history of music
