At Spring Grove Primary School we actively encourage children to become musicians and to appreciate music in various forms and from different cultures. This is achieved through learning nursery rhymes in Early Years all the way through to performing the Year 6 production at the end of the year. Music is fun and an enjoyable learning experience, where children can create, play and perform.
Opportunities
Throughout their school journey the children are given opportunities to:
- Sing, dance, listen, and comment on different styles and genres of music;
- Explore and play various instruments, both tuned and untuned;
- Create and compose their own music, individually and within groups;
- Use technology in creating music, through apps like ‘Garage Band’; and
- Have fun with music.
Skills
The skills the children will be focusing on and developing throughout the school are:
- Pulse – the regular and steady beat of the music
- Rhythm – long and short sounds or patterns that happen over the pulse
- Pitch – high and low sounds
- Tempo – the speed of the music, fast or slow or in-between
- Dynamics – how loud or quiet music is
- Timbre – all instruments including voices have a certain sound quality
- Texture – layers of sound working together to make music interesting to listen to
- Structure – every piece of music has a structure (eg. introduction, verse, chorus ending)
- Musical notation – the reading and writing of music
- Developing an understanding of the history of music through exploring the time of styles and genres
Performing
Children get the opportunity to showcase their skills and talents through performances to their peers, families and friends. This is achieved through:
- Class assemblies
- Topic-based plays
- End of year concerts
- Festivals
- Opportunities to perform with outside agencies
How do we plan?
For Nursery and Reception children at Spring Grove, we plan our lessons by following the Early Years Foundations Stages (EYFS) with particular focus on the ‘expressive art and design’ strand. For Years 1 to 6, we follow the 2014 National Curriculum. In school, from Reception to Year 6, we use the Charanga Music School scheme with 6 units taught over the school year. The scheme is supported by the Hounslow Music Service (HMS) which also provides Key Stage 2 children with the opportunity to learn to play a musical instrument, in small groups, with a specialist teacher through the HMS Wider Opportunities scheme.