Music at Brightwell
"We are Musicians"
Curriculum Intent
At Brightwell School, our music curriculum intends to inspire creativity and self-expression and encourages our pupils on their musical journeys as well as giving them opportunities to connect with others. We hope to foster a life-long love of music by exposing pupils to diverse musical experiences and igniting a passion for music. By listening and responding to different musical styles, alongside finding their voices as singers, performers and composers, they will become confident, reflective musicians.
‘Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity’
The National Curriculum
Skills
The aims of our Music curriculum are to develop pupils who:
- Can sing and use their voices individually and in a group
- Create and compose music on their own and with others
- Use technology appropriately when composing
- Have opportunities to learn a musical instrument
- Understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated
- Listen to, review and evaluate the work of great composers and musicians from a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions
- Enjoy and have an appreciation of a range of different musical styles e.g. Classical, Jazz, Rock, Hip Hop, Pop etc.
- Use and understand musical language and include musical features in their own work
- Make judgements about the quality of music
- Have opportunities to play a wide variety of instruments
- Have different opportunities to take part in performances
Implementation
Our music curriculum ensures that pupils sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate.
This is embedded through classroom activities as well as weekly singing assemblies, various concerts (currently accessed online) and performances. In Year 2, pupils learn how to play the recorder and in Year 3 they have violin music lessons delivered by the Oxfordshire Music Service.
The core elements of music are taught in classroom lessons, following the Charanga music scheme, so that children are able to use the language of music to discuss it, and understand how it is made, played, appreciated and analysed. Charanga 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.
Performances
Musical performances feature throughout a pupil's time at Brightwell School - from singing in the Nativity performance in Reception and Key Stage 1 through to an end of year summer performance in Key Stage 2. There are opportunities for pupils to perform the instruments they learn, whether that is a class performance for recorders and violins or performances for those pupils that choose to learn to play the piano or join our popular iRock bands.
Our whole school singing assemblies form part of our Collective Worship programme and we often share these songs with parents in our end of term gatherings at Church and Achievement assemblies.
Please see our Curriculum Overviews on the class pages for further details of what the children are learning.
