Music

At St Edwards we use Kapow Primary music scheme. The intention of this is first and foremost to help children to feel that they are musical, and to develop a life-long love of music. We focus on developing the skills, knowledge and understanding that children need in order 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 music can be written down. Through music, our curriculum helps children develop transferable 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

In accordance with the National Curriculum, we ensure that coverage of knowledge and skills is developed sequentially throughout the school. We have adopted the Kapow Scheme, to ensure that children receive quality music lessons throughout the year – we cover two units per term. These include: performing, listening, composing, history of music and inter-related dimensions of music: pulse, pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure, appropriate musical notation.

Impact

Every week, the children take part in whole school singing assemblies which are fun and engaging and teach children to sing in tune with other people while also improving their sense of melody, rhythm and recital of songs.  We also have a school choir which takes place once a week, in which the children learn a variety of songs for performance at different times of the year: in church, at our local old people’s home, in the Town Hall or at other public venues. Music is monitored through class observations and pupil interviews, to ensure that children enjoy their activities and learning whilst making good progress.