Music

Intent 

Music is a universal language and at Worsley Bridge our intention is for children to develop a life-long love of music and experience the joy that it inspires. We want children to experience the sense of belonging that music can bring. 

Our high-quality music education focuses and develops the skills, knowledge and understanding that children need to become confident performers, composers and listeners. Our curriculum introduces children to music from all around the world and across generations, teaching children to respect and appreciate the music of all traditions and communities. 

Children will develop the musical skills of singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, improvising and composing music, and listening and responding to music. They will develop an understanding of the history and cultural context of the music that they listen to and learn how it can be written down. Through music, our curriculum helps children develop transferrable skills such as team-working, leadership, creative thinking, problem solving, decision-making and presentation and performance skills. These skills are vital to children’s development as learners and have a wider application in their general lives outside and beyond school. 

Implementation 

Worsley Bridge uses the Kapow music scheme which takes a holistic approach to music, in which the following individual strands are woven together to create engaging and enriching learning experiences: 

• Performing 
• Listening 
• Composing 
• The history of music 
• The inter-related dimensions of music 

Each five-lesson unit combines these strands within a cross curricular topic designed to capture pupils’ imagination and encourage them to explore music enthusiastically. Over the course of the scheme, children will be taught how to sing fluently and expressively and play tuned and untuned instruments accurately and with control. They will learn to recognise and name the interrelated dimensions of music – pitch, duration, tempo, timbre, structure, texture and dynamics – and use these expressively in their own improvisations and compositions. 

Alongside the curriculum, the children experience specialist music provision from highly skilled musicians and teachers in the Bromley Youth Music Trust. 

Reception and Key Stage One have weekly singing lessons and come together for a weekly singing assembly.  

Key Stage Two children have the opportunity to play an instrument each year for a term including the recorder, ukelele and djembe drums. They also have a weekly singing assembly. 

We are fortunate enough to have many peripatetic teachers who offer lessons in a wide range of instruments (any child eligible for pupil premium funding will be offered free private lessons in an instrument of their choice).  

Key Stage Two children are encouraged to join the school choir who have enthusiastically participated in Trust wide concerts and are looking forward to entering competitions run by the BYMT.  

In Key Stage Two, the children are given the opportunity to showcase their hard work and perform to an audience in an annual musical concert. 

Our curriculum follows the spiral model where previous skills and knowledge are returned to and built upon. Children make progress through the increasing complexity of tasks, as well as developing a greater understanding and knowledge of the history of music, staff and other notations, as well as the interrelated dimensions of music. 

In each lesson, pupils will actively participate in musical activities from a range of styles and traditions, developing their musical skills and their understanding of how music works. Lessons incorporate a range of teaching strategies from independent tasks, paired and group work as well as improvisation and teacher-led performances. Lessons are ‘hands-on’ and incorporate movement and dance elements as well as making cross curricular links with other areas of learning. 

Adaptation opportunities are available for every lesson to ensure that lessons can be accessed by all pupils as well as guidance given to stretch pupils’ learning. 

Strong subject knowledge is vital for staff to be able to deliver a highly effective and robust music curriculum. Each unit of lessons includes multiple teacher videos to develop subject teacher knowledge and support ongoing CPD. Further CPD opportunities can be found through the webinars offered by music specialists from Kapow. The music subject leader also has termly CPD through specialist provision from the Bromley Youth Music Trust.  

Impact 

The impact of our music curriculum can be constantly monitored through both formative and summative assessment opportunities. Each lesson includes guidance to support teachers in assessing pupils against the learning objectives and at the end of each unit there is often performance element where teachers can make a summative assessment of pupils’ learning.  

Pupils should leave primary school equipped with a range of skills to enable them to succeed in their secondary education and to be able to enjoy and appreciate music throughout their lives. 

The Progression of skills grid from the Kapow scheme is below in the link: 

Condensed-Music-Progression-of-KSAV-A4_KP22.pdf 

Year-1 Music National Curriculum OverviewYear-2 Music National Curriculum OverviewYear-3 Music National Curriculum Overview

Year-4 Music National Curriculum OverviewYear-5 Music National Curriculum OverviewYear-6 Music National Curriculum Overview