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Maidenbower Infant School and Nursery

"What happens early, matters for a lifetime"

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Music

Music

Intent, Implementation and Impact

 

Intent

At Maidenbower Infant School and Nursery, we believe that, “what happens early, matters for a lifetime”. We intend to provide music opportunities in our curriculum which supports our children to develop a love and appreciation of music, and to enjoy playing, singing, creating, composing and performing music.

We believe that learning music should be fun! We ensure that music is a subject that every child can achieve in and experience success. Our main aim is to instil a love of learning about music in every child. There is an increasing amount of evidence that demonstrates the benefits of music, particularly singing and performance, on overall health, well-being and all-round confidence.

 

Our music curriculum embodies our school values:

Respectful  - We intend for children to understand and respect the similarities and differences of music in different cultures, religions and social groups.

Kind - We want to instil a sense of collaboration and teamwork in our children, helping them to share and support each other’s learning. Music helps children connect to themselves as well as to the people around them.

Curious - We believe children are born naturally curious and we aim to nurture this curiosity in music. Our music lessons are exploratory and provide experiences that children may not have from their home environments. Throughout our music curriculum, we introduce the children to different types of genres of music that they may not have been exposed to before.

Ambitious - We teach an ambitious and engaging music curriculum for every child. We are committed to ensuring that our music teaching is ambitious and that we have high expectations of what a child can achieve in music.

 

During music teaching, lessons and provision, we provide opportunities for all children to:

  • Develop awe and wonder about the variety of music around them, including different genres of music.
  • Develop knowledge and understanding of different types of music genres, instruments, musicians and composers from all around the world
  • Think and work like musicians, developing key musical skills such as reading music, exploring with pitch, dynamics and tempo, performing to an audience and responding to music.
  • Build on previously learnt knowledge, deepening their understanding of music year on year.
  • Expand their vocabulary with musical terms that are explicitly taught and then regularly used in lessons.
  • Make connections with other subjects and life experiences through music.

 

Implementation

At Maidenbower Infant School and Nursery, we have created an ambitious and engaging curriculum which develops children’s musical knowledge and skills. Music at Maidenbower Infant School and Nursery follows an ambitious and progressive knowledge and skills-based sequence of learning from Nursery through to Year Two.  This is based on the Statutory National Curriculum, but we ensure our curriculum is adapted to be bespoke for our school, our local area and community needs. We also use non-statutory guidance such as the Department for Education’s ‘The Power of Music to Change Lives: A National Plan for Music Education and Early Years ‘Development Matters’ and ‘Birth to Five Matters’.

In Nursery and Reception, our Early Years curriculum involves children having regular, cross curricular opportunities to play, explore and perform during high quality continuous provisions activities, relating to their topic. Children in Reception are taught more formal music lessons in addition to this, covering the areas of music within our knowledge and skill progression documents (singing, playing musical instruments, exploring, experimenting, and composing music, as well as responding to music).

In Key Stage One, music is taught during weekly 30-45-minute lessons of whole class teaching. Each class teacher delivers the music lessons for their class. Children experience a variety of activities in these lessons, including singing, playing instruments, learning about rhythm, beat, pitch, dynamics, tempo, timbre and moving towards an understanding of notation. In addition, our Music Subject Leader selects a composer of the fortnight of either contemporary or classical music that the class teacher can share information about with their class, helping them to learn a little about the life of the composer and to listen to an example of their music. 

We enrich our music curriculum with a weekly singing assembly which Key Stage One children take part in, with Reception children joining in the Summer term. We also provide music enrichment opportunities such as a visit from The Junk Orchestra, our Key Stage One choir group where children have the experience of singing in public in the church and other school events such as ‘Carols round the Tree’ and our school summer fayre. Children in Year One also get to take part in the ‘Little Big Sing’. This is a large group singing event with other locality schools through West Sussex Music Hub. We also offer whole class instrument ensemble lessons in Year Two with Djembe Drums or the Ukelele, and the opportunity for one-to-one parent paid lessons in piano in Year One and Two. 

 

Impact

As a result of our carefully planned, progressive and enriching music curriculum, children are enthusiastic about music and demonstrate curiosity about musical instruments, sounds, singing and composers.

 

By the end of their learning journey at Maidenbower Infant School and Nursery, children will be able to:

 

  • Demonstrate a love and appreciation of music and show further interest in this subject in future learning.
  • Know how music is made using a variety of instruments.
  • Answer questions about musical terminology and reflect on their knowledge.
  • Have the opportunity to play a range of percussion instruments, both following musical notation and inventing their own compositions.
  • Follow musical notation and invent their own compositions.
  • Develop skills and personal qualities for lifelong learning, preparing them to make an active contribution not only in their local community but to society as a whole.

Below you will find our Music Development Plan for 2024-2025. This plan explains what music teaching, learning and experiences we provide children at Maidenbower Infant School and Nursery.

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