Music

Intent

We ensure that music is accessible for all children at Plaistow Hill Primary and Nursery School. Our focus is on creating a highly enjoyable and motivating learning experience that children find rewarding and they actively engage with. Integrating music into a well-rounded curriculum enhances the overall quality of a child's education, boosting self-esteem, inspiring creativity, and helping them set and achieve goals.

Teaching music at Plaistow Hill aims to nurture, sustain, and celebrate the individual aesthetic and creative potential of every child. It seeks to engage all children and build a skills-based understanding of the core fundamentals of the subject.

Plaistow Hill believes that teaching music is a subject that not only allows children to use and develop their imagination but also enables them to express a wide range of emotions. It also contributes to raising the school's profile in the community offering excellent opportunities to all children, regardless of their social backgrounds and academic abilities.

Implementation

At Plaistow Hill we use Charanga, an online music education platform, that provides a thoughtfully structured curriculum aimed at quickly enhancing students' aural memory and technical skills. Each unit focuses on a particular musical genre or theme, with the learning journey broken down into five progressive steps.

Step 1 – Singing

The children learn and perform a focal song for the unit, appraising and comparing other related songs at the start of each lesson.

Step 2 – Playing an Instrument

Children learn to play a piece of music based on the focal song on the glockenspiel. We provide a class set of glockenspiels to ensure each child has ample opportunity to develop their skills.

Step 3 – Improvisation

Using the learned piece as a foundation, children devise their own improvisations, incorporating rhythmic and melodic ideas from the piece.

Step 4 – Composition

The children compose a short piece of music to accompany the song.

Step 5 – Performance

The children and their teacher discuss and decide which elements to include in the final performance, which is filmed to allow for reflection on their achievements and areas for improvement.

Children are also given the opportunity to listen to and appraise the music they hear. During this part of the lesson, they are asked various questions about what they can hear in the music, whether they enjoyed the piece, the genre, and the composition of the song. They are encouraged to use appropriate musical terminology when responding.

Impact

The careful sequencing of the curriculum – and how concepts are gradually built over time – is the progression model. If pupils are keeping up with the curriculum, they are making progress. Formative assessment is prioritised and is focused on whether pupils are keeping up with the curriculum.

 In general, this is done through:

• Questioning in lessons. Teachers check understanding so they can fill gaps and address misconceptions as required.
• Pupil conferencing. Subject leads and SLT talk to pupils about what they have learnt.
• Listening and observation of performance in class as an ongoing process. Children often perform in groups to each other and this gives an opportunity for staff to assess children’s achievements and plan in to lessons areas for improvement. Examples of work can be recorded (audio and/or videoed) and put into a music evidence folder.

Additionally, using the support and guidance of ‘Charanga’, teachers can then make a judgement about child’s musical skills and understanding in relation to the National Curriculum level of attainment. This additionally suggests Deeper Thinking tasks to extend and challenge the children. Using all this assessment, it will aid future planning. Children are also encouraged to make age-appropriate judgements about how they can improve their own work or that of a peer.