Our Music subject leader is Mr Garratt

Intent

A high-quality music education should engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music to sing and compose.

At Upperby Primary School we want our children to develop a  love music.  We want our children to recognise the job opportunities in the music industry, music producers, songwriters or rock stars!  We want our children to remember their music lessons in our school and embrace the musical opportunities they are presented with.

Implementation

The music curriculum has been carefully built and the learning opportunities and assessment milestones for each year group crafted to ensure progression and repetition in terms of embedding key learning, knowledge and skills. At Upperby Primary School we use the Charanga Musical School scheme – which provides our teachers with week-by-week lessons for each year group in the school from ages 4-11. Our music scheme is based on: Listening and Appraising; Musical Activities – creating and exploring; and Singing and Performing. 

In Key Stage 2 we provide all the children with at least one opportunity to learn a musical instrument taught by specialist music teachers through open access from the local authority music service.  In addition we facilitate guitar lesson which is an additional activity for children.  We develop singing with a specialist, who teaches singing skills to whole classes and our school choir.  We provide a range of opportunities for the children to perform both with school and for the wider community.

Impact

The pupils are assessed against the performance descriptors for each year groups which have been carefully mapped out.  This means that skills in music are progressive and build year on year.   Assessment information is used to inform further curriculum developments and provision is adapted accordingly.  The subject leader monitors assessments and provides support for staff to ensure continued progress.

At Upperby, we use the Charanga musical school to provide high quality music lessons for our children.  Charanga is supported by the Cumbria Music Service and enables us to cover all aspects of music teaching.  Our children are able to experience many different forms of music, including Pop, Reggae, Blues, Rock and R & B as well as listening to and appraising classical music several times a week.  The service also allows us to progressively teach all of the inter-related dimensions of music such as rhythm, pitch and tempo.

We also use Cumbria Music Service teachers, who come into school to teach specific instrument lessons to our Year 3 and Year 5 pupils.  Currently, Year 3 children learn to play a Dood (clarinet) and Year 5 children learn to play a ukulele.