Rationale

At Newnham Infant and Nursery School, we aim to ensure that all children develop a passion for music. Through our music curriculum, we help children appreciate and enjoy a range of musicians and genres. Each lesson, children are encouraged to express themselves, using talk partners to discuss and explore the different elements of a song or genre. We celebrate each child’s unique skills as they develop new skills and perform as part of a class or small group. Music lessons are an interactive, ‘hands on’ opportunity for our pupils to enhance their ability and confidence to perform. Our music curriculum enables the children to become resilient and ambitious learners as they continue to revisit, develop and improve upon their previous learning. Our pupils are given the opportunity to use a range of instruments to develop fundamental skills for future learning within the subject.

Intent

At Newnham Infant and Nursery School it is our intent to enable children to develop and explore musical skills with increasing understanding and enjoyment. We encourage children to work and play with others in a range of group situations and develop the way children perform their skills for different activities and performances. We demonstrate to our pupils how to improve the quality and control of their performance as well as teaching children to recognise and describe how their bodies feel when listening to and playing music. We develop our pupils’ enjoyment and passion for music through interactive, creative and imaginative activities. We embed an understanding in children of how to develop their abilities and how to evaluate their own success. We strive to establish a high profile of music throughout our school and celebrate the musical achievements of our pupils both in and out of school. We assess pupils learning, analyse and interpret the results to inform future planning and lessons.

Implementation

These aims are embedded within our music curriculum and across wider school life. Through music sessions with class teachers, children are provided with opportunities to develop their skills across a broad range of topics and genres. Fundamental skills are developed within the EYFS and as children progress through our school their skillset is fine tuned to provide them with strong foundations for their future musical lives. We listen to the opinions of our children and use this to help incorporate different genres and activities into our music sessions. This ensures children are exposed to a variety of different genres of music whilst capturing their interests and using this positive momentum to develop their enjoyment of the subject. Pupils’ are provided with opportunities to play musically during their playtime with outdoor musical instruments available. Children are encouraged to talk about how music makes them feel and why this happens. Through our scheme of work, musical skills are introduced, revisited and embedded to enhance the ability of our pupils. Identifying and developing core skills of music ranging from pupils understanding of beat, rhythm, instruments both tuned and un-tuned and other key musical vocabulary such as verse, chorus, instrumental and tempo.

Impact 

We have a range of ways to find out what the children know. We observe children during set independent activities to see how they are using the new vocabulary they have been introduced to, and to see their understanding of what has been taught. We encourage the children to talk during class discussions, group and paired work.

Monitoring in music includes learning walks and  pupil voice in order to ascertain correct curriculum coverage, the quality of teaching and learning as well as the children’s attitudes to learning. This information is then used to inform further curriculum developments and provision is adapted accordingly.