At Signhills Infant Academy, we recognise the importance of music in every aspect of daily life. As well as ensuring full coverage of the National Curriculum, taught through the Collins Music Hub Scheme, we provide children with many extra-curricular activities to enhance their musical education.
Intent
At Signhills Infant Academy, we intend to create endless opportunities for our children to develop the love and respect of music based around the four key elements to becoming a musician: performing, composing, transcribing and describing music. This will open the doors for children to have hobbies and even careers in the musical industries. From the moment they start school in Reception, until they leave us in Y2, we believe music brings life into our school, allowing children the chance to express themselves in new and inspiring ways.
At Signhills Infant Academy, we strive to ensure that music lessons are fun, active and engaging. We use a variety of musical pieces from a range of different styles so that pupils are able to appreciate and internalise music from throughout the ages. We actively encourage pupils to create their own pieces of music, as well as equip them with the correct technical terms so that they can discuss the pieces of music that they have listened to. We aim to encourage children to understand the value and importance of music in their own and others lives, in addition to using their musical skills, knowledge and experiences to involve themselves in music in a variety of different contexts. We celebrate performance skills and encourage pupils to flourish during all musical activities.
AtSignhills Infant Academy, in conjunction with the Collins Music Hub Scheme and the aims of the National Curriculum,our music teaching offers opportunities for children to:
- 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 inter-related dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations
The Music Hub Scheme provides a structure and skill development for the music curriculum being taught throughout the school.From Early Years every music lesson involves listening to stories and songs, performance songs, a piece of listening music with ideas for how children can explore and respond and the chance to new lyrics sung to a traditional melody. A focus in Early Years is on the children understanding the term pulse.
Although Music Hub is the scheme we use to teach discreet music lessons, we also teach music in other ways such as:
- In Early years, children have access to, and are exposed to, music in every session (through the use of chants, songs, rhymes, musical instruments in the provision and as taught as part of their theme when applicable).
- Additional opportunities are provided in Music, such aschoir, singing assembly, music lessons, trips to the juniors to see live performance and musicians coming into school.
- Our weekly singing assembly is an opportunity to perform songs from a range of historical periods. Each Wednesday we practice two songs. We aim to learn traditional hymns, classic songs, songs from different cultures and current songs. We also remind children of key music vocabulary during this assembly such as pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture and structure.
- Each week in assembly we introduce a new piece of music which we feel is vital to our cultural capital. This music ranges from artists across the globe, past and present and covers every genre from rock and pop to classical. During our assembly we talk to the children about the genre of music and how it has been composed.
We ensure that the music curriculum we provide will give our children the confidence and motivation to continue to further develop their skills into the next stage of their education and life experiences.
Implementation
To implement and maintain high standards in our music curriculum, we ensure that there is a detailed approach to planning that enables good progression throughout the school, with lessons within units that are carefully sequenced. Teachers across all year groups plan engaging music lessons that reference the national curriculum, our own progression statement documents, Music Hub and utilise the expertise of music specialists within the school. During music lessons, we teach subject specific vocabulary which we encourage children to learn and use through regular revisiting. We adapt and extend our curriculum to suit the needs of all learners within the school. Teachers work together to plan and deliver a curriculum that enables children to:
Develop an ability to listen to, appreciate and understand a wide variety of music, including different styles, periods and cultures
Have opportunities to explore and express ideas and feelings about music, in a variety of ways, for example through art.
Explore a range of musical elements, for example: pitch, tempo and dynamics.
Encourage active involvement in creating and developing musical ideas using voices and instruments both tuned and un-tuned.
In Foundation Stage and Key Stage One, children will learn how to play the boom whackers and start to explore xylophones.
Develop a sense of group identity and togetherness through composing, rehearsing and performing music with others, to an audience.
Enable all children to have access to music and to develop an enjoyment of music which will always be part of their lives.
At Signhills Infant Academy we also offer the following music enrichment:
Choir
Singing assemblies
Autumn harvest celebration
Christingle service
Christmas Nativity
Easter performance
Summer carnival
Y2 leavers assembly
Implementation
Impact
Music Hub scheme provides our pupils with an access to a varied programme, which allows them to discover areas of strength, as well as areas they might like to improve upon. In conjunction with our enrichment offer we bring the varied elements of music and the learner together creating a wonderfully rich palette giving all pupils at Signhills Infant Academy a sense of achievement, self-confidence, interaction with and awareness of others, and self-reflection. Our Music curriculum also develops an understanding of culture and history, both in relation to children individually, as well as ethnicities from across the world. Our students are able to enjoy music in as many ways as they choose either as listener, creator or performer. They can dissect music and comprehend its parts. They can sing and feel a pulse. They have an understanding of how to further develop skills less known to them, should they ever develop an interest in their lives. This will open the doors for children to have hobbies and even careers in the musical industries.
SEND
We believe that every child, regardless of need, can succeed through our music curriculum and can express themselves in new and inspiring ways. We believe in using high-quality inclusive practice which requires teachers to think creatively about their pedagogical approach and ways to include every child at their level of need. This could mean creating extra roles and music parts at an appropriate level to suit the needs of a child to enable them to join in with the whole class, while still setting high expectations for achievement. Our music curriculum offers suggestions for how teachers can approach different barriers to learning with an inclusive lens. Focussing on barriers to learning instead of specific needs avoids categorising types of SEND, which can sometimes have preconceptions of what a child can or cannot achieve.