Music
Where words fail, music speaks.
Curriculum Intent
Buckingham supports a whole school approach to Music in the curriculum and throughout the whole school and its community.
At Buckingham, we aim:
- To foster an appreciation and understanding of music through active involvement in listening, appraising, composing and performing.
- To provide a curriculum that is broad and balanced and which progressively builds upon musical skills, concepts and knowledge throughout the EYFS and key stages 1 and 2.
- To promote pupils’ social, cultural and spiritual development through exposure to sound and music from a variety of traditions, cultures and styles.
- To make the music curriculum accessible for all children regardless of age, gender, ethnic background or ability.
- To encourage children to attain their potential within their own capabilities. We aim to build self-esteem and self-confidence and where appropriate foster and develop a particular musical talent.
- To assist children in developing appropriate skills through which they can express ideas, thoughts and feelings through music making with personal satisfaction.
Early Years Foundation Stage
In the Early Years Foundation Stage, children are provided with percussion instruments and are encouraged to play both individually and as an ensemble; singing and playing well-known songs and nursery rhymes. Music contributes to a child’s personal and social development. Counting songs foster a child’s mathema
tical ability, and songs from different cultures increase a child’s knowledge and understanding of the world.
Key Stages One and Two
Musical learning is built around the following key areas of music:
- singing
- composing
- improvising
- playing and performing
- critical engagement (listening, applying knowledge and understanding, responding and appraising)
Implementation
To ensure whole school progression, we have invested in a scheme: Charanga Musical School.
Music lessons begin from Year One through to Year Six, however music is also taught in the Early Years Foundation Stage as an integral part of the topic work covered during the year, in relation to Early Learning Goals (ELGs).
At Buckingham, we use the aims of the National Curriculum and the structure of Charanga Musical School scheme to guide our Music teaching. From this, each year group may either plan one 45-minute lesson per week, or a longer, afternoon session in each fortnight. Key concepts must be revisited and children are taught to gradually develop musicianship skills throughout the course of the year.
Knowledge organisers are designed to act as an aide memoire to staff when delivering units of work. These contain prior learning, key vocabulary, unit information, song background, suggested tasks, differentiation, guidance on notation and diagrams of notes to play on tuned instruments such as glockenspiels.
A medium-term plan using a Charanga Musical School unit may follow this six-lesson structure:
- Lesson 1 – Listen and appraise and begin learning the song through singing
- Lesson 2 – Practise singing the song. Less reliance on the backing. Teach the harmonies (KS2) or actions (foundation stage/KS1)
- Lesson 3 – Introduce the instrumental playing – in KS2 this is where you would teach the notation on the stave
- Lesson 4 – Improvisation with the notes they learned last week – bronze/sliver/gold challenge + practise song on instruments
- Lesson 5 – Composition
- Lesson 6 – Practise compositions and planned performance opportunity
Children’s work is recorded once every half-term in books, across key stages one and two. This can be in the form of photos, examples of children using notation, compositions children have created, audio files and videos (by use of QR code).
Junior Choir
This summer term, our choir members have once again been invited back to the Rose Theatre in Kingston to perform in the Richmond Music Trust’s Singing Festival – Whatever the Weather!
If you child is a member of the Junior Choir, please do speak to them about rehearsing for their performance. Details for this event will follow in the coming weeks.
Below, you can find the backing tracks to the songs they will be singing in the festival.