Intent

At Summercroft, we have designed our music curriculum with the intent that our children will develop a love of music and as musicians increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. We promote Summercroft learning powers and mental well-being through high-quality music lessons and other musically diverse opportunities.  As our pupils progress they will develop a critical engagement with music, compose and listen with discrimination.

 By the end of Key Stage 1 pupils should achieve this love and successful musicality by:

• Using voices expressively and creatively.  
• Playing tuned and untuned instruments musically.
• Listening with understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music.
• Experimenting, creating, selecting and combining sounds using the interrelated dimensions of music (pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and notation).

By the end of Key Stage 2 pupils should achieve this love of music by:

• Playing and performing in solo and ensemble using voices and playing musical instruments.
• Improvising and composing music using the interrelated dimensions of music.
• Listening and recalling sounds with increasing aural memory.
• Appreciating a wide range of live and recorded music from different traditions and from great composers and musicians.
• Developing an understanding of the history of music.

Implementation

At Summercroft, the National Curriculum objectives are taught through the Charanga scheme which provides high quality and engaging lessons with clear, scaffolded progression built in from Early Years to Year 6. The scheme provides a consistent approach to the teaching of music at Summercroft and learning is sequential and incremental.  All activities are based around a song. The Scheme supports all the requirements of the national curriculum. Units of Work enable children to understand musical concepts through a repetition-based approach to learning. Learning about the same musical concept through different musical activities enables a more secure, deeper learning and mastery of musical skills. Each Unit of Work comprises the strands of musical learning which correspond with the national curriculum for music:

1. Listening and Appraising
2. Musical Activities
   1. Warm-up Games
   2. Optional Flexible Games
   3. Singing
   4. Playing instruments
   5. Improvisation
   6. Composition
3. Performing

At Summercroft we also include opportunities to place music at the heart of our community and take opportunity to develop pupils’ musicality within the wider context of celebrations and collaboration throughout the year. This includes running our own orchestra, participation in the Bishop's Stortford Music Festival for Year 2 and Year 5 and Young Voices at the O2 for Year 6.