Music

What we do.
At Bagshot Infant School, we hope that our children will gain a strong understanding of what music is, through: listening and appraising; singing and playing instruments; and evaluating, analysing, and composing across a variety of music genres, historical periods, styles and traditions. Our aim is for pupils to develop a love of music; to encourage the confidence to perform; and ensure that they understand the value and importance of music in the wider community.
How we do it.

Our music curriculum is based on the ‘Charanga Musical School’ scheme of work, which ensures consistency and progression throughout the school. Charanga provides an integrated, practical, exploratory and child-led approach to musical learning. The interrelated dimensions of music weave through the units to encourage the development of musical skills as the learning progresses through listening and appraising; differing musical activities (including creating and exploring); and performing. The ‘Charanga Musical School Scheme’ provides teachers with week-by-week lesson support for each year group in the school. It is ideal for specialist and non-specialist teachers and provides lesson plans, assessment, clear progression, and engaging and exciting whiteboard resources to support every lesson.

Each ’Unit of Work’ includes the strands of musical learning which correspond with the national curriculum for music:

Perform (including singing)

Use their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes.

Instruments

Play tuned and untuned instruments musically.

Listen and appraise

Listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music.

Explore and compose

Experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the inter-related dimensions of music.

How we ensure progress. (skills)
Detailed medium-term plans are provided by the Charanga scheme, and learning tasks are designed to enable progress to take place across the school, building on the skills from each previous year. We use this alongside our whole school ‘Music: progression of skills’ document which can be read here
What we want children to remember from each unit. (knowledge)

Key music terminology including: pulse, rhythm, pitch, tempo, dynamics, timbre, texture, structure, notation

That music is grouped in a variety of genre which have emerged over time.

Recognise the sounds made by a variety of musical instruments

Learn the words of several songs to perform

How we assess music
The Charanga scheme includes built in teacher assessment opportunities which is used alongside our ‘Music: progression of skills document’. Children’s progress is tracked across their time at the school.
How we make music enjoyable.

Charanga includes warm up games and activities for each lesson. Music lessons are practical, and child led using a variety of different instruments. The children are also encouraged to improvise using their imagination to accompany the song being learnt.

We provide opportunities for the children to perform at Harvest, Christmas and end of term assemblies for parents and grandparents. We are also active participants in local community events which include: Christmas visits to care homes; singing at the local church; and village fun days.