Music

Intent

At Daven Primary School, children gain a firm understanding of what music is through listening, singing, playing, evaluating and composing across a wide variety of historical periods, styles, traditions, and musical genres. We are committed to ensuring children understand the value and importance of music to their own and others’ lives and wellbeing and also the impact music has in the wider community. All children have access to music regardless of their academic ability, race, ethnicity, background and language. SEND pupils are actively encouraged to participate fully as music is often an area of the curriculum which allows them to excel. We aim to provide children with the opportunity to progress to the next level of their creative excellence.

Beyond our musical lessons, we develop children's opportunity to engage in music through choir and specialist music teachers coming in to teach our Y5 pupils brass. 

Implementation

At Daven Primary School, we use The Charanga Musical School Scheme which provides teachers with week-by-week lesson support for each year group in the school. The Scheme supports all the requirements of the National Curriculum.

Below is an image of the units taught in each year group. More detailed information can be found on the documents, at the bottom of this page.

In line with the curriculum for music and guidance from Ofsted, this Scheme moves away from the previous levels and learning objective/outcome concepts to an integrated, practical, exploratory and child-led approach to musical learning.

Ofsted have stated that “We will not always know the learning outcomes” so segregated learning objectives at the start of each lesson are not appropriate. Instead the interrelated dimensions of music weave through the units to encourage the development of musical skills as the learning progresses through listening and appraising, differing musical activities (including creating and exploring) and performing.

How the Scheme is structured

Each unit of work comprises the of strands of musical learning, which correspond with the National Curriculum for music:

1. Listening and Appraising
2. Musical Activities
   1. Warm-up Games
   2. Optional Flexible Games
   3. Singing
   4. Playing instruments
   5. Improvisation
   6. Composition
3. Performing

Mastery in our music lessons

Charanga Musical School Units of Work enable children to understand musical concepts through a repetition-based approach to learning. Learning about the same musical concept through different musical activities enables a more secure, deeper learning and mastery of musical skills. The activity manual guides our teachers through each strand of musical learning from Reception to Upper Key Stage 2 in order for us to plan our teaching and to see the opportunity to embed a deeper learning, knowledge, understanding and skills.

Musical teaching and learning is not neat or linear. The strands of musical learning, presented within the lesson plans and the on-screen resources, are part of the learning spiral. Over time, children can both develop new musical skills and concepts, and re-visit established musical skills and concepts. Repeating a musical skill doesn’t necessarily mean their progress is slowing down or their development is moving backwards! It's just shifting within the spiral. Mastery means both a deeper understanding of musical skills and concepts and learning something new.

As our Y3/4 class is mixed-age, the way in which we deliver the Charanga Musical Schools Units of Work is by delivering a two-year rolling progamme, as outlined on the Y3/4 LTPs (these can be found on their class page).

The diagram below depicts the depth of learning that occurs as the children move through the year groups. As they progress, the colour deepens and the learning widens:

Impact:

Throughout the child’s journey at Daven Primary School, their musical skills and understanding are built so that they can progress confidently for their next stage of learning.