Music

Intent

At St. Mary’s, we believe that music is an essential part of a balanced education for all children. Our curriculum is inspiring and exciting and builds upon children's prior knowledge and encourages them to become life-long musicians.  Our aim is to build a legacy of musicianship that children will carry with them beyond St Mary’s. We want our children to develop a life-long love of music through exposure to diverse musical experiences and opportunities to express their creativity.  

Implementation

Our St. Mary’s Music curriculum provides a wide range of opportunities for children become confident and reflective musicians. They develop and celebrate their God-given gifts of attentive listening, singing, playing, composing, and performing.

We follow the Charanga scheme of learning, which provides an interconnected spiral curriculum, so that children develop a deeper understanding of the fundamental building blocks of music – such as tempo, pitch, or dynamics.  Skills and knowledge are built upon from EYFS through exploration and as children progress through the Key Stages, they grow in confidence in performance. Our children access new musical concepts while re-visiting established skills. Children are exposed to music from cultures around the world and are taught to listen with a discerning ear. They learn a variety of songs, allowing them to put their theoretical knowledge of rhythm and melody into practice. Children will learn to play tuned and untuned instruments and are given opportunities to perform to audiences. They are able to respond thoughtfully to a range of music types, improvise using taught skills, and create new compositions using different notations.

Children use these skills across the curriculum areas and are given ample opportunities to perform throughout the school year. Our children will sing in Mass, lead class assemblies, perform in Nativities and end of year performances, and use their musical skills in whole-school events.

Enhancing our music curriculum further, children are given the opportunity to have private tuition from our guitar, violin and piano teachers and to work their way through the grades in music and compete in competitions.