Our Music Vision
Our vision at Willow Bank Infant School is to provide a high-quality music education that inspires pupils to develop a lifelong love of music, whilst increasing their self-confidence, creativity and sense of our school value of community.
Our Music Intent
The intention of our music curriculum is to help children to feel that they are musical, and to develop a lifelong love of music. We focus on developing the skills, knowledge and understanding that children need in order to become confident performers, composers and listeners. Our curriculum introduces children to music from around the world and across generations, teaching children to respect and appreciate the music of all traditions and communities.
Children will develop the musical skills of singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, improvising and composing music, and listening and responding to music. Through music, our curriculum helps develop other transferable skills such as teamwork, creative thinking, problem solving and decision making.
Our Music Implementation
At Willow Bank Infant School we follow the Kapow music scheme which enables pupils to meet the end of Key Stage attainment targets outlined in the National Curriculum. Our music curriculum is centred round the following strands of music:
· Performing
· Listening
· Composing
Each five-lesson unit combines these strands within a cross curricular topic. They will learn to recognise and name the inter-related dimensions of music – pitch, duration, tempo, timbre, structure, texture and dynamics – and use these in their improvisations and compositions and to describe what they hear. Each year previous skills and knowledge are returned to and built upon.
Lessons are taught weekly and incorporate a range of teaching strategies such as independent tasks, paired and group work as well as improvisation and performances. Lessons may also incorporate movement and dance elements.
All children take part in a weekly singing assembly and have the opportunity to perform in front of an audience during special celebrations throughout the year. During the year, each year group puts on a play which incorporates singing, dance and performing. Children in Year 2 have the opportunity to join the choir and practise and perform popular showtunes.
Our Music Impact
The impact of our music curriculum is monitored through formative assessment opportunities against the learning objectives. At the end of each unit there is often a performance element where teachers can make a summative assessment. After the implementation of our music scheme pupils should leave Willow Bank Infant School equipped with a range of skills to enable them to enjoy and appreciate music throughout junior school and beyond.
