Music
We believe at Morland Area Primary School that all children should have the opportunity to experience a variety of skills in music including performing, composing and appraising pieces. We make every effort to make our music curriculum cross-curricular by using ICT to enhance musical performances.
In Class 2, all children learn to play the recorder. We also have a range of other musical instruments to use across all year groups. The choir is open to children from Year 2 to Year 6 and every year we take part in the Young Voices concert held at Manchester Arena. For this concert we learn a range of songs paired with dance moves and join with hundreds of other schools and children to sing in the largest choir in the world. In past concerts there have been more than 8,000 children singing!
In addition to this, all children take part in learning and performing songs for our Christmas nativity performances each year. Within these performances there are opportunities to sing solos, in rounds and in small groups.
Music is a key part of our collective worship. We have a singing worship assembly each week and we learn songs to sing at special events and church assemblies.
We have an outside music teacher who runs private music lessons once a week for those children wanting to learn piano or guitar. She also offers small group recorder lessons once a week. Children use their recorder skills alongside the music curriculum lessons and we hold termly music assemblies to showcase the children’s talent.
In Class 4, we have weekly guitar lessons where children learn the skill to play guitar, practice singing and learning to sing in parts. Years 5 and 6 have termly opportunities to perform to the rest of the school.
We also offer choir as a lunch time club – this offers further experiences such as performing at the Young Voices concert and mini concerts at local residential homes.
We follow the National Curriculum for 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.
Aims
The national curriculum for music aims to ensure that all pupils:
- Perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians.
- Learn to sing and to use their voices, to create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, use technology appropriately and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence.
- Understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the interrelated dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.
Attainment targets
By the end of each key stage, pupils are expected to know, apply and understand the matters, skills and processes specified in the relevant programme of study.
Subject content
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 interrelated 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 interrelated 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.
Singing Club - Our singing club is run at lunch-time by Miss Berry and Mrs Johnson.
Guitar - All pupils in Year 5 and 6 have guitar lessons weekly and are taught by a member of the Cumbria Music service.
Instrument Tuition - Private piano and guitar are taught weekly by local peripatetic music teachers to any child that wishes to partake. If you wish your child to have lessons please contact the school office for more information.