MUSIC
Intent
At Redhill Primary School, we make music an enjoyable experience. Our aim is to provide a music curriculum that will enable each child to achieve their best and build their confidence, with shared experiences as well as encouraging ambition, teamwork and resilience. As there is a big focus on wellbeing and self-regulation, we will be using music within school for different parts of the day to aid a calming environment, support focus during lessons with classical music in the background and allowing the class teachers to choose the pieces they feel their class would enjoy the most for their lessons. Music provides a creative outlet and improves wellbeing, as well as supporting teamwork and removing barriers allowing all children to love their learning. We identified the need to include more Music history so developed our own journey for the entire school including EYFS. We also teach music through stand alone music lessons, peripatetic music lessons, as well as cross curricular such as Society, Art and Theme lessons.
As the Music coordinator, I have adapted the curriculum to support our learners whilst Covid rules and procedures are still in place. We have ensured that Music at Redhill can continue to provide an escape and promote self-confidence in a safe way for all. As we are able to sing in our bubbles, we will use singing lesson activities to support this leading to whole school singing assemblies once it is safe to do so.
We want our children to be able to access both tuned and untuned instruments and be able to develop their own confidence in their musical journey with reading music, pitch, dynamics, rhythm and harmony. We work together with The Music Hub to support our musical offer at Redhill. Year 4 learn the ukulele and Year 6 are learning the recorder. We hope that by Summer term 2021, we can offer at least one class in each key stage the chance to learn an instrument and also support the progression of instrument lessons for the future, as our long term commitment to Music.
Implementation
We are currently designing our own Redhill Music curriculum which has been inspired by the Model Music Curriculum, BBC 10 Pieces and our children themselves. We have based the curriculum around the four main skills, singing, listening, composing and performing. As we have been creating this curriculum ourselves, we can show progression with the skills developing and also by revisiting these skills, we are able to build upon prior learning with references to when the class would have last looked at the certain piece. For example, Year 1 look at a piece of Music that is then looked at again in Year 3 but in a more challenging way. We use pupil voice and termly teacher lesson evaluations to help support and identify next steps. This has already helped support teachers with their own personal CDP needs and is something that the Music Hub also are able to support us with.
Our children are able to take part in the Arts with different musical, dance, drama and creative activities to perform to not just the school but in the wider area. We will build upon the cultural capital by providing the children with opportunities throughout the year for all year groups, such as working with a West End musical star, taking part in different concerts and workshops such as Young Voices and having a variety of musical based days and events. By having these opportunities to work with musical professionals and broaden our musical knowledge, we are able to look at and experience a range of music from different traditions, genres, cultures and by great composers throughout the history of music.
We use virtual ways of sharing our performances by recording them either by video or sound and uploading those to the staff shared area. We have class boxes of instruments that are compliant with cleaning regulations due to COVID 19.
Graham Tudor, ex-pupil and West End star
‘I have been working at Redhill delivering performance and dance workshops for a number of years now. I am a former pupil and have enjoyed a West End career playing in the some of the biggest theatres in the world, including playing ‘Joseph’ in ‘Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’. Every time I work at the school, I am blown away by the effort of the children and more importantly, their will to listen and succeed. I absolutely love the characters I meet in every class and visiting is always a highlight of my calendar.’
Impact
Through a broad and engaging curriculum inspired by our children, their confidence within performing will increase and they will be provided with opportunities to perform outside of school where they will be able to experience what it is like to work as part of a wider team as well as applying their skills within the music curriculum.
Over the last few years, we have developed our curriculum and increased our musical off at Redhill and have been awarded the Bronze Award from The Music Hub. We hope that with further support and extending our musical offer to our children from The Music Hub, we will be able to achieve silver by Summer 2022.
Pupil voice has already identified areas that the children really enjoy and those to work on. We already have peripatetic music lessons in Year 4 and are working on increasing this during the 2021/22 academic year by finding out what instrument the children would like to play and supporting their journey to do this.
We have also been providing support for teachers, through their lessons discussions and walk rounds. Staff members have the confidence to be honest and we can support any areas needed with their CPD but also further areas of learning for the class. This also highlights how each year group adapts the lessons depending on their class and can show progression throughout the school.
Each class has a class composer, from EYFS to Year 6. Each child will be able to go on their own musical journey through their school career starting in EYFS as each class has a composer going from the Baroque period to Modern day composers in Upper KS2.
Music is assessed each lesson/activity by the staff which states the skill and who is ‘on track’ and who is ‘not yet’. We then think about why those children are not on track and how we can support them further to get back on track. We also use pupil voice, we record performances either video or sound, and also by formatively three times a year using DC Pro.
COVID -19 Statement
As a school we still plan to use our singing curriculum when it is safe to do so. In the meantime, we have devised a scheme of work based around the BBC’s 10 Pieces. Each class teacher chose 8 pieces for them to use as their music lessons for the Autumn term and 8 pieces for the Spring term.
Classes have their own box of instruments that must be cleaned as per their class cleaning sheet and then left to quarantine for 72 hours.
Each class have been given a composer from the Baroque period to modern day composers. Years 4-6 have both a classical and modern composer. As the classes move up, the periods get later providing them with classical music as well as good quality videos and soundtracks.
Ambition
Never Give Up
Teamwork
Love Learning
Equality & Fairness
Respect
