Intent - Why are we teaching this?

 

The National Curriculum for Music aims to ensure that all pupils:

• Perform, listen to, review, and evaluate music

• Be taught to sing, create, and compose music

• Understand and explore how music is created, produced, and communicated.

 

At Ermington School, the intention is for children to understand what music is through listening, singing, playing, evaluating, analysing, and composing across various historical periods, styles, traditions, and musical genres.

 

Our objective at Ermington School is to develop a curiosity for the subject and an understanding and acceptance of the validity and importance of all types of music. We are committed to ensuring children understand the value and importance of music in the wider community. They can use their musical skills, knowledge, and experiences to involve themselves in music in various contexts in and out of school.

 

Implementation- How is this being taught in the classroom?

 

At Ermington School, we have adopted the Charanga Music School program of learning to deliver our music curriculum from EYFS to Year 6.

“The Charanga Musical School Scheme provides teachers with week-by-week lesson support for each year group in the school. It provides lesson plans, assessments, clear progression, and engaging and exciting whiteboard resources to support every lesson. The Scheme supports all the requirements of the national curriculum.”

We at Ermington know that music needs to be learnt or taught linearly. Instead, it is experienced holistically over time. It is for this reason that Charanga takes a repetitive approach to teaching music. The Charanga music curriculum ensures students regularly sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate music every week. This is embedded in the weekly lessons, singing assemblies, regular performances (including Christmas performances and End of Year productions) and the learning of instruments with the Devon Education Music Service.

Using Charanga, students learn how to play an instrument, sing, compose and improvise on various instruments, both tuned and un-tuned percussion. In doing so, they understand the different principles of each method of creating notes and how to read basic music notation. The elements of music are embedded in the Charanga scheme. They are therefore taught in classroom lessons so that children can use some of the language of music to dissect it and understand how it is made, played, appreciated and analysed. This feeds their understanding when listening, playing, or analysing music.

In the Early Years, children compose and perform using body percussion and vocal sounds, which develops the understanding of musical elements without the added complexity of an instrument.

Ermington School promotes the enjoyment of singing throughout their weekly music lessons and also use SingUp as a resource to help children 'raise their voice' in whole school singing assemblies through our termly inter-class choir competition, and we are very proud of our choir who meet as an after-school club.

 

Impact - What is the effect?

Each year at Ermington School, our children become more confident as musicians because they have had multiple opportunities to develop their musical skills and knowledge. Because of the repetitive teaching and learning approach, children can see and work on the areas they want to improve upon.

“Charanga Music School enables 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.”

Because of the integral nature of music and the learner, children can experience and develop other fundamental life skills such as achievement, self-confidence, interaction with and awareness of others, and self-reflection. Music develops an understanding of culture and history, both in relation to students individually and ethnicities from around the world. Children can enjoy music as many ways as they choose - either as listeners, creators or performers. They can dissect a piece and comprehend its parts. They can sing, feel a pulse and have had opportunities to play various instruments. They have an understanding of how to develop skills less known to them further, should they ever develop an interest in their lives. 

Key Assessment Criteria - Being a Musician

At Ermington, teachers use key assessment criteria for each year group, for each subject, to support their judgements about the attainment and progress of our children. The criteria support staff to ask rich questions and probe understanding.