Music

Our intention at Castle Hill Primary School is first and foremost to help children to feel that they are musical, and to develop a lifelong love of music. We focus on developing the skills, knowledge and understanding that children need in order to become confident performers, composers and listeners. Our curriculum introduces children to music from around the world and across generations, teaching children to respect and appreciate music of all traditions and communities.

At Castle Hill, children will develop the musical skills of singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, improvising and composing music, and listening and responding to music. They will develop an understanding of the history and cultural context of the music that they listen to and learn how music can be written down. Through music, our curriculum helps children develop transferable skills such as team-work, leadership, creative thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, and presentation and performance skills. These skills are vital to children’s development as learners and have a wider application in their general lives outside and beyond school.

Aims of the Music Curriculum

The national curriculum for music in Key Stage 1 aims to ensure that all pupils:

• 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

In Key Stage 2 the curriculum develops this knowledge and skills further to ensure all pupils:

• 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.

At Castle Hill, we believe that children should be given the skills to become effective and successful Musicians. We aim to build children’s musical skills through the six main areas of musical understanding:

• Listen and Appraise

• Singing

• Playing

• Improvisation

• Composition

• Performance

Our music curriculum ensures that pupils are taught the key musical knowledge and vocabulary and these terms and knowledge are revisited and interwoven throughout units in each group enabling pupils to build upon and embed their understanding.

From year 2, pupils receive whole class instrumental lessons on the glockenspiel and from year 4 they learn to play the ukulele, including how to read musical notation. Children are offered guitar lessons taught by an external teacher and also band lessons provided by Rocksteady. We also support music beyond the curriculum through wider school and community events and our school choir.