Intent

At Pyrcroft Grange Primary School we use Kapow Primary music scheme. The intention of this is first and foremost to help children to feel that they are musical, and to develop a life-long love of music. We focus on developing the skills, knowledge and understanding that children need to become confident performers, composers, and listeners. Our curriculum introduces children to music from all around the world and across generations, teaching children to respect and appreciate the music of all traditions and communities. Children will develop the musical skills of singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, improvising and composing music, and listening and responding to music.

They will develop an understanding of the history and cultural context of the music that they listen to and learn how music can be written down. Through music, our curriculum helps children develop transferable skills such as team-working, leadership, creative thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, and presentation and performance skills. These skills are vital to children’s development as learners and have a wider application in their general lives outside and beyond school.

At Pyrcroft Grange Primary School we promote a language rich environment and believe it's crucial to provide pupils with opportunities for exploratory talk during their learning. This involves thinking aloud, questioning, discussing, and collaboratively building ideas.

In each music lesson, children learn key musical vocabulary and have opportunities to use it independently. Through our Music curriculum, pupils have opportunities to develop their oracy skills by:

• Rehearsing as a group and singing as an ensemble.
• Listening with concentration and providing feedback about other children’s and composers’ work.
• Expressing opinions respectfully.
• Collaborating in a group.
• Discussing composition or personal preferences using musical vocabulary.
• Reasoning about instrument choices and justifying choices of instruments or sounds in compositions using musical vocabulary.
• Modifying tone of voice.
• Building confidence when using their voice.

Implementation

In accordance with the National Curriculum, we ensure that coverage of knowledge and skills is developed sequentially throughout the school. Kapow Primary’s Music scheme has been designed as a spiral curriculum with the following key principles in mind:

• Cyclical: Pupils return to the same skills and knowledge again and again during their time in primary school.
• Increasing depth: Each time a skill or area of knowledge is revisited it, is covered with greater depth.
• Prior knowledge: Upon returning to a skill, prior knowledge is utilised so pupils can build upon previous foundations, rather than starting again.

We have adopted the Kapow Scheme, to support teacher subject knowledge and to ensure that children receive quality music lessons throughout the year. Kapow Primary’s Music scheme takes a holistic approach to music, in which the Inter-related dimensions of music below are woven together to create engaging and enriching learning experiences:

• Listening and evaluating
• Creating sound
• Notation
• Improvising and composing
• Performing (singing and playing)

Each five-lesson (30 minutes) unit combines these strands within a cross-curricular topic designed to capture pupils’ imagination and encourage them to explore music enthusiastically.

In each lesson, pupils will actively participate in musical activities drawn from a range of styles and traditions, developing their musical skills and their understanding of how music works.

We recognise that there are children of widely different musical abilities in all classes, so we provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child. We achieve this in a variety of ways by:

• Setting open-ended tasks which could have a variety of responses
• Setting tasks of increasing difficulty (not all children complete all tasks)
• Providing resources depending on the ability of the child
• Incorporating the use of technology to support pupils to access the music curriculum
• Using classroom assistants to support the work of individuals or groups of children

SEND - We will strive to remove barriers to learning for pupils with SEND. Adopting a positive and proactive approach will ensure that children with SEND are able to express themselves and take an active part in lessons. Explicit instructions and scaffolding will enable all pupils to achieve and succeed in music.

Our Music Early Years Foundation Stage (Reception) activities are designed to target Development matters ‘Expressive Arts and Design’ statements and fully integrated with the Kapow Primary Key stage 1 and 2 curriculum for Music, offering a unified, sequential approach to teaching music in EYFS.

The children in Key Stage 2 have weekly singing lessons led by a professional singer and have the opportunity to perform in a summer concert, at a local opera house. In Key Stage 1 the children perform in an annual music festival. This supports our pupils to develop their musical confidence and experience performing with their peers and a live audience.

Impact

After the implementation of Kapow Primary Music, pupils should leave primary school equipped with a range of skills to enable them to succeed in their secondary education and to be able to enjoy and appreciate music throughout their lives.

The expected impact of following the Kapow Primary Music scheme of work is that children will:

• Be confident performers, composers and listeners and will be able to express themselves musically at and beyond school.
•  Show an appreciation and respect for a wide range of musical styles from around the world and will understand how music is influenced by the wider cultural, social, and historical contexts in which it is developed.
•  Understand the various ways in which music can be written down to support performing and composing activities.
• Demonstrate and articulate an enthusiasm for music and be able to identify their own personal musical preferences.
• Meet the end of key stage expectations outlined in the National curriculum for Music.

Every week, the children take part in whole school singing assemblies which are fun and engaging and teach children to sing in tune with other people while also improving their sense of melody, rhythm and recital of songs.  We also have a school choir which takes place once a week, in which the children learn a variety of songs for performance at different times of the year: in church, at our local old people’s home.

The impact of Kapow music’s scheme can be constantly monitored through both formative and summative assessment opportunities. Each lesson includes guidance to support teachers in assessing pupils against the learning objectives and at the end of each unit there is often a performance element/assessment quiz where teachers can make a summative assessment of pupils’ learning. Each term staff record a summative judgement (working towards or expected) on Arbor.

Using Seesaw children can record their own performances, reflect and self-evaluate their own work, independently and in a small group.

Music Development Plan