At Highfield Primary School, we believe that a high-quality Music curriculum will enable our children to gain a firm understanding of what music is through listening, singing, playing, evaluating, analysing and composing across a wide variety of styles and musical genres. Through learning about historical periods and traditions, our curriculum will foster in our pupils a curiosity, as well as develop an understanding of the importance of all types of music and gain a respect for the role that music may play in each of our lives. We are committed to ensuring that our children understand the value and importance of music in the wider community and are able to use their musical skills, knowledge and experiences to involve themselves in music now and in the future.

Our Music Curriculum design ensures that our children are able to:

• explain how music can change the feel of a scene
• use musical vocabulary when explaining why a composer has chosen to orchestrate a scene in a certain way
• begin to learn the names of different untuned percussion instruments, the groups they belong to, and how to hold and play them correctly
• enjoy and have an appreciation for music
• listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, cultures, styles and traditions

Music lessons, across all key stages, are delivered in weekly sessions, through the expertise and knowledge of a specialist music teacher.

In the Early Years Foundation Stage (E.Y.F.S.) setting, our Music provision is taught through the three areas of:

• Communication and Language
• Physical Development
• Expressive Arts and Design

In the E.Y.F.S, alongside the weekly lessons, music is interwoven into daily routines and children have the opportunity to explore music in provision areas and develop ideas modelled by adults such as creating their own songs to well-known tunes. Children are encouraged to explore different everyday objects and the sounds that they can make as well as using these to make up rhythms and patterns.

In Nursery our children are taught to:

• sing a large repertoire of songs
• listen with increased attention to sounds
• respond to what they have heard, expressing their thoughts and feelings
• remember and sing entire songs
• sing the pitch of a tone sung by another person (‘pitch match’)
• sing the melodic shape (moving melody, such as up and down, down and up) of familiar songs
• create their own songs, or improvise a song around one they know
• play instruments with increasing control to express their feelings and ideas

In Reception our children are taught to:

• listen carefully to rhymes and songs, paying attention to how they sound
• learn rhymes, poems and songs
• create collaboratively, sharing ideas, resources and skills
• listen attentively, move to and talk about music, expressing their feelings and responses
• sing in a group or on their own, increasingly matching the pitch and following the melody
• explore and engage in music making and dance, performing solo or in groups
• sing a range of well-known nursery rhymes and songs

In Key Stages One and Two the curriculum is delivered through half-termly units, which have an explicit focus on musical vocabulary, developing an understanding of historical periods and culture, as well as teaching our children the technical aspects of music.

Over the course of each unit, our children will be taught how to sing fluently and expressively, play instruments accurately and with control, recognise and name the inter related dimensions of music - pitch, duration, tempo, texture, timbre, structure and dynamics and use improvisation and composition to explore their ideas.

Through the sequence of units, previous skills and knowledge are returned to and built upon in every lesson. Lessons incorporate independent tasks, paired and group work as well as improvisation and teacher led performances. Each lesson’s learning is accessible to all pupils with planned opportunities for challenge so that all children achieve their best.

At Highfield we believe that music plays an integral role in helping children to feel part of a community, therefore we provide opportunities for all children to create, play, perform and enjoy music both in class and to an audience. Through assemblies and key stage performances, children showcase their talent and their understanding of performing with awareness of others. Music is interwoven into the wider school life with weekly whole school singing, external performances, extra-curricular clubs, including choir and ukulele, and links with other subjects through a dedicated ‘Music Week’.

Ultimately, our aim is that our children will develop confidence as performers, composers and listeners. They will have an appreciation of and show respect for a wide range of musical styles and genres, from across the globe. That we will have fostered and encouraged in them a love, enthusiasm and appreciation for music, which they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.