Teaching Music at Bramham Shadwell Federation

 

Intent

At Bramham and Shadwell Federation we are dedicated to ensuring that every child is given a high quality music education which will engage, inspire and develop a love of music. We want children of all abilities and talents to build their self-confidence and have a sense of achievement through learning and performing.

We are committed to ensuring children understand the value and importance of music in the wider community and have an appreciation of music from around the world throughout history, building their cultural capital. We want our children to use their musical skills, knowledge and experiences in a variety of contexts so that they leave us with a tangible sense of musicianship and performance.  We aim to showcase our children’s achievements as much as possible within the school and local community.

 

Implementation

Children receive weekly music lessons in class. The award winning music scheme Charanga has been carefully chosen in order to ensure that all children are given the opportunity to cover the music national curriculum in an engaging way. Charanga gives staff high quality planning to follow as well as a list of key vocabulary for each Key Stage and a set of interactive resources available on the whiteboard. This enables teachers to have the confidence, professional knowledge and tools to deliver exciting and progressive music lessons. Children have the opportunity to use a range of musical instruments from un-tuned and tuned percussion (such as glockenspiels, drums etc) to electric pianos and strings.

Our curriculum is designed so that as children progress through school, they build on and apply existing knowledge in both practical and theoretical aspects. Through quality teaching,they extend their musical vocabulary, compose, perform, listen and evaluate as well as look in depth at the inter-related dimensions within music. Our specialist music teacher from ArtForms works with each class for a half-term on a specific set of skills building up to a final performance. This is usually linked to the children’s Topic for that half-term, for example the Year 6 WW2 production and Year 1 Pirates production.

In addition to music lessons in class, children are offered a wide range of musical opportunities in school. We have peripatetic teachers who come in weekly offering individual lessons on a range of instruments, culminating in an end of term performance to children and parents in assembly. We have a school choir who meet weekly and perform in the local community and visitors who come in to school to perform for the children.