Music

Intent

At Knights Enham Nursery and Infant School, music is an enjoyable, rich and stimulating learning experience. We enable children to participate in a variety of musical experiences through which we aim to build a range of skills and understanding in musicality. We intend to nurture and develop children's confidence to express themselves through music and respond to a range of music. Through singing songs and performing children learn about the structure and organisation of music and we teach them to listen and to appreciate different genres. Children also develop descriptive language skills in music lessons when learning about how music can represent different feelings, emotions and narratives. We teach technical vocabulary such as volume, pitch, beat and rhythm and encourage children to discuss music using these terms.

Implementation

In the Early Years children follow the ‘Early Years Foundation Stage’ (EYFS) curriculum, focusing on the following key statements for music:

30-50 months -

• Enjoys joining in with dancing and ring games.
• Sings a few familiar songs.
• Beginning to move rhythmically.
• Imitates movement in response to music.
• Taps out simple repeated rhythms.
• Explores and learns how sounds can be changed
• Developing preferences for forms of expression.
• Uses movement to express feelings.
• Creates movement in response to music.
• Sings to self and makes up simple songs.
• Makes up rhythms.

40-60 months –

• Begins to build a repertoire of songs and dances.
• Explores the different sounds of instruments.

ELG –

• Children sing songs, make music and dance, and experiment with ways of changing them.
• Children use what they have learnt about media and materials in original ways, thinking about uses and purposes. They represent their own ideas, thoughts and feelings through design and technology, art, music, dance, role-play and stories.

In Key Stage One children follow the National Curriculum:

• Mu1/1.1    use their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes
  
  Mu1/1.2    play tuned and untuned instruments musically
• Mu1/1.3    listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music
• Mu1/1.4    experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the interrelated dimensions of music.

Impact

Our children enjoy lessons and we believe this early love of learning stimulates children to become life-long learners. Music assessment is ongoing to inform teachers with their planning, lesson activities and differentiation. Summative assessment is completed at the end of each term to inform leaders of the improvements or skills that still need to be embedded.