Music
'Let your light shine' (Matthew 5:16)
Intent
We promise to do the best for all our pupils with everything that they learn. Children who attend our schools are supported to access the full curriculum. Our Christian ethos and values underpin all that we do within our learning and the wider activities in our school.
Our curriculum is designed and focused on equipping our learners with the knowledge and skills they need to achieve their dreams. We aim to grow their confidence, develop their social skills, and equip them to become active participants within their communities.
We maintain high standards and continually look at new ways of teaching our pupils the skills they require, explicitly and directly. Our curriculum is knowledge-rich, specifically sequenced, and is taught to be remembered. It promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental, and physical development of our pupils and prepares them for the opportunities, responsibilities, and experiences of later life. With this in mind the Primary Knowledge Curriculum is used trust wide for foundation subjects.
Since its conception, the Primary Knowledge Curriculum (PKC) has placed ‘powerful knowledge’ at the heart of learning. This is knowledge that “is powerful because it provides the best understanding of the natural and social worlds that we have and helps us go beyond our individual experiences” (Young, 2013). Through a deep respect of the traditions of each unique subject, the PKC recognises the identity of the disciplines that are studied. Our vision, and intent, was to create a well-sequenced, well-specified and ambitious curriculum for all children to access. As a result, the PKC has been organised coherently to ensure it builds interesting and meaningful connections within and across history, geography, science, art, DT and English, allowing children to think deeply about interesting content. Our aim is to inspire the next generation of learners through teaching them essential background knowledge, so that they can embark on their next step in their journey filled with confidence, able to form their own opinions and develop a deep love for learning.
A knowledge-rich curriculum exposes children to ambitious content that has been highly specified and well-sequenced, leaving nothing to chance. Within schools, time is limited, and a knowledge-rich curriculum ensures that each moment will support children in acquiring the knowledge, skills and cultural capital that they will need to become well-educated citizens of the future. Every historical figure encountered, philosophical idea grappled with, and scientific concept applied, fits neatly into a scheme of learning that holds a sense of purpose and develops logically from lesson to lesson, unit to unit and year to year. Utilising cognitive science, the psychology of learning, memory and schemata, a knowledge-rich curriculum is designed to ensure that the knowledge is taught to be remembered. At its core, a knowledge-rich curriculum democratises knowledge – it enables all children, regardless of socio-economic background, to be provided with the opportunities to succeed in later life. The PKC has taken evidence and research into account to ensure that it incorporates the principles of spaced retrieval, formative low-stakes quizzing and plenty of practice to develop knowledge fluency in pursuit of mastery.
Musical ‘knowledge’ has been described as knowing how to make music, knowing musical practices with critical insight and knowing how music enriches the inner life: in summary music making and music thinking (Toyne, 2021). This curriculum, which is informed by the Model Music Curriculum (MMC) (2021), develops musical knowledge within this conceptual framework. A knowledge-rich curriculum can be misinterpreted as being about knowing ‘facts’. Within the discipline of music this would be a misconception: an understanding of music can only begin to develop where the language of music is explored through experience. Musical knowledge which is gained through experience (which can be difficult to put into words) is sometimes referred to as ‘tacit’ knowledge. In this curriculum, such experience is developed through singing, listening, composing (including improvising) and performing. These musical practices are woven throughout the curriculum, and are carefully sequenced so that pupils can build procedural knowledge and technical skills through practice. This allows them to begin to realise and develop their own expressive intentions through music.
Beginning to understand the language of music might be described as becoming more ‘musical’. This is the aim of this curriculum. As such, each unit has a musical focus, such as pulse, rhythm, tempo, pitch, timbre, dynamics, form/structure, texture or harmony or a combination of these. These are sometimes called the dimensions of music. Knowledge of the dimensions is sometimes referred to as ‘constructive’ knowledge. Pupils may explore how music is constructed using the elements of music by listening analytically or using them as components to build their own compositions. Experience of, understanding and use of these elements build gradually throughout the curriculum. For example, in year one children begin to understand pulse by marching. By the time they reach year 6 they have progressed to learn the difference between simple and compound metre.
Different pieces and genres of music are explored as examples of the different musical focus in each unit. For example, in year 4, by listening to Duke Ellington’s ‘Take the ‘A’ Train’, children are able to understand the concept of the ‘off-beat’ in swing music, which is a type of jazz. The different elements of music do not exist in isolation from each other, so, whilst a unit will have a primary musical focus on a particular dimension, other dimensions are highlighted and used alongside the primary dimension to develop the children's musical understanding. For example, whilst studying Ellington’s ‘Take the ‘A’ Train’ year 4 also learn that it includes examples of improvisation, which are an important part of jazz music. It is recognised that children’s understanding of and proficiency in practising music builds with repeated experience of how the different elements of music intersect. As such these elements are woven throughout the curriculum so that children can begin to build automaticity in their musical practice.
Implementation
The different genres of music which are explored in the curriculum introduce them to the wonderfully diverse story of music and build pupil’s declarative knowledge of musical culture and history. Music is drawn from a variety of traditions, including western and non-western classical music, folk, and a variety of modern traditions including rock, pop and jazz. Pieces are drawn from all over the world and from periods spanning six centuries. Because the driving focus of each unit is musical, music is not presented in chronological sequence. Increasing cultural contextual understanding is enhanced by learning about music which relates to other areas of the PKC curriculum. For example, in year 5 children learn about Nigerian drumming at the same time as learning about art from the same region.
Each unit, over the course of six lessons, follows the same structure. At first the children listen to and encounter music which will form the focus of their musical learning. This is not a passive exercise: they are encouraged to actively engage with the area of musical learning which will be the focus of the unit. They then explore the key musical ingredients and cultural context of the piece of music through active music making. Practising, improvising and/or composing then allows them further to experience and investigate the key musical focus before performing the music they have made to their peers. Evaluation of their own and others’ performances concludes the process.
Each lesson in the unit also follows a broadly similar structure: warming up the body and the voice using songs which relate to the musical focus of the unit; recalling prior learning; listening to, responding to and exploring music which forms the focus of learning for the lesson; creative practice based around the focus music whether by composing, improvising, practising or performing; evaluating and reflecting at the end of the lesson. A familiar structure week by week aims to create and perpetuate an effective learning environment. Lesson 6 of each unit has an emphasis on practising for performance, performing and evaluating that performance. As such this lesson is broadly the same in each unit with no or little new learning. This is deliberate: the lesson is intended for the children to practise, allowing them to build on their procedural knowledge and technical skills to be able to perform with increasing confidence and expression.
Each lesson starts with singing as this is the essential basis of musical learning. Songs are generally revisited over the course of a unit, from unit to unit and across year groups to allow for repeated practice of familiar material, allowing children to build their singing skills. Elements of the songs chosen often relate to the musical focus encountered in the rest of the lesson. Learning music through movement (as developed by the methods of Dalcroze and Kodály) is also seen as a central element of musical development and therefore forms an important part of many lessons. Western notation is learned using the methods of Kodály and introduced slowly and in relation to a gradual increase in understanding of musical elements which the children experience as the focus of each unit. It is important that ‘sound’ is encountered and understood before its corresponding ‘symbol’ is introduced. Finally, each lesson includes an element of working with others. This is central to musical practice and may be experienced as a whole class or in smaller groups which are introduced as the children get older and can manage social cooperation with more efficacy.
Alongside our knowledge-rich curriculum teaching and learning, we provide wider musical opportunities for our children, such as singing in a choir – we encourage all children in Years One – Six to participate and plan occasions for the choir perform to the school and within the wider community. Such activities, which are important (and recommended by both the MMC and National Plan for Music Education (NPME) (2022)) are provided alongside this curriculum, which forms only a part of a child’s musical education at school. Music which the children listen to, create and perform as a part of this curriculum can, of course, be a springboard or impetus for musical activity outside of the classroom.
Impact
Our Music curriculum is high quality, knowledge-based, well-sequenced and is planned to demonstrate progression. If our pupils have understood and retained knowledge from the carefully sequenced curriculum we have taught, we know that they are where they should be.
At Farcet C of E Primary School we ensure that children are equipped with music skills and knowledge that will enable them to be ready for the curriculum at Key Stage 3 and for life as an adult in the wider world.
We want the children to have thoroughly enjoyed learning about music, therefore, encouraging them to undertake new life experiences now and in the future.