Being a Musician
Intent- Why are we teaching this?
The National Curriculum for music aims to ensure that all pupils:
• Perform, listen to, review and evaluate music
• Be taught to sing, create and compose music
• Understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated.
At Port Isaac School the intention is that children gain a firm understanding of what music is through listening, singing, playing, evaluating, analysing, and composing across a wide variety of historical periods, styles, traditions, and musical genres.
Our objective at Port Isaac School is to develop a curiosity for the subject, as well as an understanding and acceptance of the validity and importance of all types of music. We are committed to ensuring children understand the value and importance of music in the wider community, and are able to use their musical skills, knowledge, and experiences to involve themselves in music, in a variety of different contexts in and out of school.
Implementation- How is this being taught in the classroom?
At Port Isaac School, we have adopted the Charanga Music School program of learning to deliver our music curriculum from EYFS to Year 6.
“The Charanga Musical School Scheme provides teachers with week-by-week lesson support for each year group in the school. It provides lesson plans, assessment, clear progression, and engaging and exciting whiteboard resources to support every lesson. The Scheme supports all the requirements of the national curriculum.”
We at Port Isaac know that music as a subject is not learnt or taught in a linear way, instead it is experienced holistically over time. It is for this reason that Charanga take a repetitive approach to teaching music. The Charanga music curriculum ensures students regularly sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate music on a weekly basis. This is embedded in the weekly lessons as well as singing assemblies, regular performances (including Christmas performances and End of Year productions) and the learning of instruments with the Cornwall Education Music Service.
Through the use of Charanga, students learn how to play an instrument, sing, compose and improvise on a variety of instruments, both tuned and un-tuned percussion. In doing so they understand the different principle of each method of creating notes, as well as how to read basic music notation. The elements of music are embedded in the Charanga scheme and are therefore taught in the classroom lessons so that children are able to use some of the language of music to dissect it, and understand how it is made, played, appreciated and analysed. This in turn, feeds their understanding when listening, playing, or analysing music.
In the Early Years, children compose and perform using body percussion and vocal sounds, which develops the understanding of musical elements without the added complexity of an instrument.
Port Isaac School promotes the enjoyment of singing throughout their weekly music lessons and also use SingUp as a resource to help children 'raise their voice' in whole school singing assemblies; through our termly inter-class choir competition and we are very proud of our choir who meet as an after school club.
Impact- What is the effect?
Throughout each year at Port Isaac School, our children become more confident as musicians because they have had multiple opportunities to develop their musical skills and knowledge. Because of the repetitive teaching and learning approach, children are able to see and work on the areas they might like to improve upon.
“Charanga Music School enables children to understand musical concepts through a repetition-based approach to learning. Learning about the same musical concept through different musical activities enables a more secure, deeper learning and mastery of musical skills.”
Because of the integral nature of music and the learner, children can experience and develop other fundamental life skills such as: achievement, self-confidence, interaction with and awareness of others, and self-reflection. Music develops an understanding of culture and history, both in relation to students individually, as well as ethnicities from around the world. Children are able to enjoy music, in as many ways as they choose- either as listener, creator or performer. They can dissect music and comprehend its parts. They can sing, feel a pulse and have had opportunities to play various instruments. They have an understanding of how to further develop skills less known to them, should they ever develop an interest in their lives.
