“Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp. Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs. Praise him upon the loud cymbals” Psalm 150

Intent

At Rowsley C of E Primary, we hope to nurture and grow the inherent interest in and love for music that can be observed in all small children.  We aim to inspire children to be creative composers, appreciative listeners and confident performers of a wide range of musical styles and genres.  We believe that music is a wonderful means of bringing people together and as such we strive to provide children with musical experiences which bring children together within their classes, the whole school and even our local community, including through performances, assemblies and church services.  Additionally, we aim to provide high-quality lessons within each of our classes which progressively build children’s knowledge and skills as they progress through school.

Implementation

The teaching of music at Rowsley is multi-faceted, ensuring children are given ample opportunity to sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate, and that the skills and knowledge they develop in each of these areas is built on every year.

The ways in which we teach music are as follows:

• Wider Opportunities – For three half terms in both Y3 and Y4, children receive instruction from a specialist music teacher in playing an instrument and reading musical notation, culminating in a performance to parents.  As part of these lessons, children also explore composition on the instrument they are learning.  
• Class lessons – Children participate in discrete music lessons based on National Curriculum objectives. We use the Charanga scheme of work in Reception, KS1 and UKS2. Children in KS1 focus on exploring music through playing the glockenspiel and children in UKS2 play the descant recorder. 
• Performances – EYFS and KS1 children deliver a Christmas performance annually; KS2 children put on a performance every summer term.  Within these, all children sing and some children perform on tuned and untuned instruments.  
• Assemblies – Every Monday, children practise singing together during our singing assembly.  In all assemblies, children hear music from the current ‘Musician of the Month’ – a composer or performer they learn more about in order to widen their appreciation of different musical styles and their understanding of the history of music.
• Instrument lessons - We invite peripatetic teachers into school to teach individual lessons for children who want to learn an instrument.  We currently have children learning violin, guitar and piano.
• Choir - All children are invited to join our choir, which this year will run in the Autumn 2 term.
• Continuous provision – Children in Reception have access to musical instruments as part of their continuous provision and are encouraged to explore these.  Children in this year group also sing together frequently, learning a range of songs including nursery rhymes. This is in addition to a weekly Charanga lesson.

Impact

Our children enjoy music in different ways – they are confident performers, they can discuss how listening to music makes them feel and they can use their knowledge and skills to develop new music using their voice and/or instruments.  Children develop their musical vocabulary every year and by Year 6 are familiar with a wide range of performers and composers from different time periods and genres.  They understand that music has cultural and historical significance when learning about different people, places and time periods.