Music at The Royal School
At The Royal School our music curriculum aims to help the children 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 the children to music from all around the world and across generations, teaching the 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 important for the children's development as leaners and have a wider application in their general lives outside and beyond school.
We use Kapow Primary’s music scheme of work as the basis of our music curriculum which aligns with the national curriculum and takes a holistic approach to music, in which the individual strands below are woven together to create engaging and enriching learning experiences:
- Performing
- Listening
- Composing
- The history of music
- The inter-related dimensions of music
Each music unit combines these strands with-in a cross curricular topic designed to capture the children's imagination and to encourage them to explore music enthusiastically. Whilst at The Royal School the children are taught how to sing fluently and expressively and how to play both tuned and untuned instruments accurately and with control. They will learn to recognise and name the interrelated dimensions of music - pitch, tempo, timbre, structure, texture and dynamics - and use these expressively in their own improvisations and compositions.
In Year 4 our children all receive tuned instrumental lessons delivered by Berkshire Maestros.
Our music is taught as a spiral curriculum, where previous knowledge and skills are returned to and built upon. Children progress in terms of taking on more complex tasks, and doing more simple tasks better, as well as developing understanding and knowledge of the history of music, staff, and other musical notations, as well as the interrelated dimensions of music and more.
In each music lesson, the children will actively participate in musical activities drawn 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 work, to paired and group tasks 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 curriculum areas.
We adapt learning for every lesson to ensure that all pupils can access it, and opportunities to stretch pupils’ learning are available when required.
Knowledge organisers are used for each unit to support pupils in building a foundation of factual knowledge by encouraging recall of key facts and vocabulary.
We have a wide range of untuned percussion instruments which the children use in their music lessons and also a class set of tuned glockenspiels. The instruments taught in our Year 4 instrument lessons vary each year - recently classes have been taught the trombone and clarinet.
Parents/carers can subscribe to Individual music lessons for their children. Currently we have specialist music teachers coming into school to teach piano and violin lessons and to run an extra-curricular 'Show Choir'.
Each year the children are given the opportunity to perform in class and whole school concerts, performances and daily acts of worship assemblies, which help raise the profile of music and support the children in their development of a love of music.