Music
‘Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon. (The National Curriculum)’
Here at Eaton Bray Academy, it is our intent that we make music an enjoyable learning experience. We encourage children to participate in a variety of musical experiences through which we aim to build up the confidence of all children from whole school participation, through to solo performances. We aim to follow the guidelines of The National Curriculum, by providing a broad, balanced and differentiated lesson that ensures the progressive development of musical concepts knowledge and skills to all children.
At Eaton Bray Academy we value our community spirit and involvement. Through music, we can reach further into the community making those all-important links by providing the opportunity to create, perform and enjoy music whilst having an invited audience.
Our primary teaching focuses on developing the children’s ability to understand rhythm and follow a beat. We teach them to listen and appraise different genres of music and to learn to appreciate different forms of music.
Children develop descriptive language skills when using technical terms like pulse, pitch, beat, tempo, rhythm and also when linking music to different feelings, narratives and emotions.
Through singing songs and playing instruments, children learn about the structure and organisation of music. Eaton Bray Academy enlists the support of specialist peripatetic teachers for instruments and uses the guidelines from respected music providers.
Aims
At Eaton Bray Academy we follow the guidelines from The National Curriculum to ensure that all pupils can:
- Confidently perform either singing or playing an instrument, either solo or as part of a group.
- Describe music, using a wide range of musical vocabulary to appraise separate pieces.
- Compose and create songs with verses and chorus that have a rhythmic pattern and awareness of timbre and duration.
- Use technology to compose, edit and refine pieces of music.
Our music scheme of work is Charanga as it complements the curriculum and scaffolds the learning opportunities throughout the key stages.
Performance is at the heart of musical teaching and learning at Eaton Bray Academy, so all pupils participate in a key stage performance. Pupils also take part in Harvest assemblies, singing assemblies and perform at our annual carol concert at Eaton Bray Church. Pupils who are confident are encouraged to perform in solo performances.
Parents are invited and welcomed to watch all of these performances whether at school or outside of school. Furthermore, we try to take pupils from reception to year 6 to attend a whole school pantomime at one of our local theatres to see first-hand how music performance can be engaging and fun.