Intent:

Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. At Rockbeare we strive to teach a high-quality music education that engages and inspires children to develop a love of music and their talents as musicians. We use music to develop confidence, creativity and a sense of achievement. We have a skills based curriculum that children develop critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best of music through history. Children follow a key-stage appropriate programme of study which provides opportunity for children to play a range of un-tuned and tuned instruments allowing children to develop musical excellence.

Our school is the heart of our community, we regularly host performances, assemblies and visit the church and local residential homes to share the musical skills we have been practising. The school offers additional music lessons in drumming, ukulele, keyboard and singing lessons. Rockbeare also holds weekly Singing Assemblies that encompass a selection of traditional hymns and modern songs. Our weekly Choir group, is led by a specialist Choir Mistress, who offers an additional opportunity to engage a child's love of singing and develop their choral skills.

The Curriculum

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 inter-related 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 inter-related 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.

Impact

At Rockbeare Pupils are assessed on their music knowledge and achievements throughout each unit of work. Each sequence of learning builds towards our yearly curricular goals. 

Assessments is made  in the core musical areas:

• playing and performing 
• using the voice
• using and understanding notation
• composing and improving
• listening and appraising 

Performances are an important part of the children’s learning journey; since the different aspects of music come together. Performances demonstrate a children’s understanding of the skills that have been taught and are a great showcase in our school and the local community. We love celebrating the high quality work of our students. 

We adopt the Charanga Musical Scheme as tool teach teach music through. The scheme provides teachers with week-by-week lesson recommendations for each year group. It is ideal for specialist and non-specialist teachers and 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. The lessons are sequenced so that the children are able to review, remember, deepen and apply their learning, which is consistent across year groups.