Our Music Intent   

We believe that primary music education should be engaging and inspiring in order for pupils to develop a love of music. We aim to create a passion for music in our children that will stay with them throughout their lives. Through all musical activities, we ensure that music is an inspiring and engaging experience that enables every child to develop their musical potential, as well as an overarching appreciation of the value of music in their own lives.

At St Cuthbert’s, our music curriculum aims to ensure that all pupils: perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians learn to sing and to use their voices, to create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, use technology appropriately and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the inter-related dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.

 

In Key stage 1

Pupils should be taught to:

use their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes

play tuned and untuned instruments

listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music

experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the inter-related dimensions of music.

 

In Key stage 2

Pupils should be taught to sing and play musically with increasing confidence and control. They should develop an understanding of musical composition, organising and manipulating ideas within musical structures and reproducing sounds from aural memory.

Pupils should be taught to:

play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and playing musical instruments with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression

improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the inter-related dimensions of music

listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory

use and understand staff and other musical notations

appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians

 develop an understanding of the history of music.

 

Implementation

Using Get Set for Music as a basis for our music lessons, children gain a firm understanding of what music is, through listening, singing, playing, evaluating, improvising and composing across a wide variety of historical periods, styles, traditions and genres.

We aim to develop children's music skills throughout their primary education in a spiral of progression, focusing on the musical elements.

Singing is particularly important and the whole school participates in our weekly Prayer through Song, led by Mr Ellson, Choral Director at the Catholic Diocese of Arundel & Brighton. He furthermore teaches different year groups across each term. 

Instruments play a key part in our music lessons: specifically Recorder, Glockenspiel and various percussion instruments. Additionally, Surrey Arts provide individual and small group instrument tuition in guitar, violin and piano. If your child is interested in learning to play one of these instruments, please follow this link - Music lessons for children - Surrey County Council