At Kelvin Grove, we believe music is creative, collaborative and celebratory. Music can bring communities together through the shared endeavour of whole-school singing, ensemble playing, experimenting with the creative process and through the love of listening to friends and fellow pupils, performing. It can bring positivity and enjoyment to our school community, enriching each student while strengthening the shared bonds of support and trust. We believe music helps young children express themselves and provides another opportunity for children to follow their passions and achieve success.
The national curriculum for music aims to ensure that all pupils:
- perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians
- learn to sing and to use their voices, to create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, use technology appropriately and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence
- understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the interrelated dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations
Music Content
Key Stage 1
Pupils should be taught to:
- use their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes
- play tuned and untuned instruments musically
- listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music
- experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the interrelated dimensions of music
Key Stage 2
Pupils should be taught to sing and play musically with increasing confidence and control. They should develop an understanding of musical composition, organising and manipulating ideas within musical structures and reproducing sounds from aural memory.
Pupils should be taught to:
- play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and playing musical instruments with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression
- improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the interrelated dimensions of music
- listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory
- use and understand staff and other musical notations
- appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians
- develop an understanding of the history of music
Music Lead: Mr Grainger
Music has always been a massive part of my life. As a child I loved listening to music and enjoying the feeling of being transported to different places by the sounds that I could hear, and as an adult (before working in education) I learned to play different instruments and performed in a band. I believe that Music in Primary School should give children the opportunity to fall in love with the subject in a variety of ways. At Kelvin Grove, the children enjoy singing, learning to play instruments, discovering the theory behind how music is arranged and listening to and appraising different genres of music. It is a privilege to be able to teach a subject that I am so passionate about to the wonderful children at this school.
At Kelvin Grove we use Charanga to help deliver our music curriculum.
Charanga is:
A world-leading music teaching and learning platform used in 62 countries
A vast library of resources, songs, instrumental courses and creative apps
Quality-assured training, support for blended and home learning, assessment, special needs education, and more.
The Model Music Curriculum
We are currently following the new ‘Model Music Curriculum‘ alongside Charanga.
The 2021 Model Music Curriculum (MMC) sits at the heart of the Government’s agenda for supporting curriculum music in schools during Key Stages 1, 2 and 3. The curriculum development has been teacher led, with input from leading musicians and education sector bodies.
Knowledge & Skills
Our music curriculum follows a clear progression of skills and knowledge in order to ensure pupils are progressing within music from year to year.
