PPA/Curriculum Time

Our curriculum-time music programme covers the following areas across the whole primary age spectrum:

  • Aural awareness
  • Composition
  • Ensembles
  • History of music
  • Music appreciation
  • Musical theatre
  • Musician study
  • Performing
  • Rhythm & beat
  • Understanding theory
  • Voice

Each area links directly to objectives that are taken from the national primary music curriculum and progress is measured via half-termly assessments, which are available to schools to view online in a secure area on our website.

We are also happy to undertake whole-school productions, such as carol concerts and nativities.

The national curriculum objectives for music in primary schools are found below:

National Curriculum - Music

Purpose of study:

Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. A high-quality music education should engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon.

Key stage 1:

Pupils should be taught to:

  • 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 inter-related dimensions of music

Key stage 2:

Pupils should be taught to sing and play musically with increasing confidence and control. They should develop an understanding of musical composition, organising and manipulating ideas within musical structures and reproducing sounds from aural memory. Pupils should be taught to:

  • 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 inter-related 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

Active Listening

This academic year we have given a huge focus to 'active listening', where children are given the opportunity to:

STOP - calm their bodies and their minds during the course of a busy school day

LISTEN - enjoy listening to different genres of music from early music to the present day

RELAX - enjoy being 'in the moment' 

REFLECT - start to think about the musical elements of the piece they are listening to... What can they hear? What does it make them think of? Can they draw what pictures come into their minds?... and gradually being able to talk musically about DYNAMICS, INSTRUMENTATION, FORM, MOOD, etc.

This is a hugely exciting part of the work we do with children and it has been a great success throughout the whole primary age range.

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