Music

Subject Lead - Miss C East

At Priory Lane Community School, we are all musicians!            

Music is one of the central building blocks of any culture. Knowledge and understanding of music is a vital part of our cultural capital in understanding where we came from and our place in the world. Through the study of music, pupils will have the opportunity to sing and play a range of instruments, as well as learn how to create ensembles that are performed to others. They will develop a critical engagement with music as well as vocabulary, allowing them to compose, listen and appraise a range of musical genres and artists. We also hope that the enjoyment gained in listening to and performing music will help in developing self-confidence and a desire to take their musical skills further in future years.

The national curriculum puts a clear emphasis on four areas of learning within music:

• Singing: warm ups, breathing, posture, dynamics, phrasing, context and vocal health
• Listening: developing an understanding of how music is constructed and the impact it can have on a listener
• Composing: creating melodies and short pieces
• Performance: to develop stage craft, feedback and collaboration skills

At Priory Lane Community School, we teach music through the Charanga scheme.  Charanga works seamlessly alongside the national curriculum ensuring that our children revisit the interrelated dimensions of music: pulse, voice, pitch and rhythm- building upon previous learning and skills. The learning within this scheme is based on listening and appraising, musical activities, creating and exploring and singing and performing. Music is taught weekly as a standalone subject, but links are made to other subjects, such as with timelines in history and the origins of music in geography.

The Charanga music scheme allows children to experience a new topic and style of music every half term. These lessons provide children with the opportunity to listen and respond to different styles of music, use their voices and instruments to listen and sing back and have a go at composing their own piece of music. The lessons are planned to support clear progression across the school. In addition to the taught music curriculum, learners listen to a range of music styles and genres in whole school assemblies. 

The music curriculum at Priory Lane Community School looks like:

• Children listening to, performing and composing real music from a range of genres, cultures and styles

• Pupils singing, appraising, moving, playing and creating to internalise musical concept

"How is it that music can, without words, evoke our laughter, our fears, our highest aspirations?"

Jane Swan

Music documents...