At Bank End Primary Academy, 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.
Implementation
The music curriculum ensures children sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate different genres of music. This is embedded in classroom teaching with Charanga. We also aim to ensure that all children participate in concerts and performances where musical talents are celebrated.
The elements of music; singing, listening and appraising, composing and performing, are taught in the classroom lessons so that children can understand how music is made, played, appreciated and analysed. In EYFS children develop their listening skills by experimenting how to make sounds with different tuned and un-tuned percussion instruments, which closely links with learning Phonics. In KS1 children are taught music through carefully planned lessons involving singing and the use of tuned and untuned percussion instruments. This is built upon in KS2 where, in addition to classroom music lessons based on Charanga, they have professional tuition in learning how to play Samba Percussion.
Impact
Through the child’s journey at Bank End Primary Academy, their musical skills and understanding are built on each year, from singing simple songs from memory and performing simple rhythm patterns in KS1, to more advanced techniques skills, and understanding in lower KS2, further developing in upper KS2 where the children can have an experience of playing an instrument and can read and follow a simple musical score. Throughout this, the child’s enjoyment of music is a key element, running alongside the ‘taught’ musical skills and objectives.
We build on children’s cultural capital by ensuring that throughout their musical education they can experience listening to and performing a wide variety of genres from different cultures. These include reggae, classical, jazz, rock, blues, pop, folk, hip-hop, ballads and many more. Each genre stems from a different part of the world and builds children’s knowledge and understanding of these places. We further enhance our curriculum by organising musical workshops, performances, professional tuition and by celebrating World Music Day.
Useful Links
Charanga Yumu - the online learning space for our Charanga music scheme.