Music
Intent
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At Christ Church Junior School, we believe that every child should be able to experience music and make progress during their time at school. The aims of our music curriculum at Christ Church are to increase the development of musicianship through singing, listening, composing and instrumental performances.
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We are committed to ensuring children understand the value and importance of music and aim to provide a practical music curriculum, where children are introduced to a wide variety of musical genres and instruments. Alongside this, we are dedicated to providing children with opportunities both in and out of school to develop their musical performance. When a child reaches the end of their musical journey at Christ Church, our aim is to have equipped them with the skills, confidence and understanding to further progress to the next level of their creative journey with music.
The national curriculum for music aims to ensure that all pupils:
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Perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians
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Learn to sing and to use their voices, to create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, use technology appropriately and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence
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Understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the inter-related dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.
Implementation
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At Christ Church, we believe that for children to develop a real enjoyment for music, it is important that they are taking part in practical sessions, where they are given the opportunity to explore and develop their own musical style, through singing, listening, composing and performing.
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Music is taught by Junior Jam, a specialist education supplier that is dedicated to providing high-quality teaching for schools. Junior Jam provides weekly music sessions that are enjoyable, dynamic and progressive. Our music curriculum is designed to meet the key skills, knowledge and understanding required by the National Curriculum and Model Music Curriculum, which is then planned to ensure that the skills are taught sequentially across the key stage and that new skills build on and develop the skills taught in previous year groups.
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Our half termly units may include:
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Music Theory with keyboards
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Songwriting with Glockenspiels
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Class Jam
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Steel Pans
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Keyboards
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Singing
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Samba Drumming
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African Drumming
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Dhol Drumming
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Boom Whackers
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Ukuleles
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Alongside the teaching of music in school, we also provide extra-curricular opportunities for children to further develop their love and enjoyment of music and performance. Children also take part in singing in daily worships. Specialist music teachers from Wolverhampton Music Service also offer individual instrumental lessons (Violin and Viola).
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Music has a rare and unique ability to bring people together and music making can make a whole class, school and community feel connected to others and part of something bigger. At Christ Church, we are committed to ensuring that our music curriculum, provided by Junior Jam and Wolverhampton Music Service, takes into consideration the needs of all pupils in a classroom setting, therefore ensuring that music is accessible to all, in an inclusive learning environment.
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With relation to the assessment of music, Junior Jam staff record on a weekly basis whether the overall learning objective for each session was achieved or not. At the end of the unit, Junior Jam also record whether the year group are working at below or above year group expectations.
Impact
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The impact of providing a specialist musical programme for our children at Christ Church through Junior Jam and Wolverhampton Music Service has had a profound impact on the children at our school. It is clear that children across all year groups are talking about music in school and most importantly, enjoy taking part in music lessons and extra curricular music activities.
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Staff in school feel comfortable knowing that specialist music teachers are delivering an exciting and enjoyable music curriculum to classes and through the use of assessment, it is clear that children are making good progress in music across school. At Christ Church, we provide a balanced and enjoyable music curriculum to our children and this has a positive impact on the teaching and learning of music to ensure all children achieve great things.
“Music is in the air - you simply take as much of it as you want”
- Sir Edward Elgar