Intent

At St. Anselm’s, our vision is to extend the rewarding and enriching experience music can provide to every child in school.  The main strands of the music curriculum are performing, composing and improvising, listening, reviewing and evaluating, understanding and exploring.  Children are taught to sing and perform a wide repertoire of songs and pieces encompassing many different styles and genres.  Children are encouraged to explore musical composition and improvisation and evaluate the effectiveness of their ideas.  History of music and the reading of notations will also be taught in Upper Key Stage 2.

Charanga Musical School Scheme of Work

At St. Anselm’s we follow the Charanga Musical School scheme of work.  Charanga works seamlessly with the national curriculum ensuring that learners revisit the interrelated dimensions of music: pulse, voice, pitch and rhythm-building upon previous learning and skills.  The learning within the scheme is based on: listening and appraising, musical activities, creating and exploring, and singing and performing.

Music is taught as a separate subject, but links may be made to other learning such as the children's topic work for that term. All learners from EYFS to Year 6 receive weekly music lessons supported by topic work for that term.  All learners from EYFS to Year 6 receive a weekly music lesson supported by Charanga.  KS2 learners are taught music for approximately 1 hour a week and in EYFS and Key Stage 1 for 30 minutes a week.

The Charanga music scheme allows children to experience a new topic and style of music every half-term.  The lessons provide children with the opportunity to listen and respond to different styles of music, use their voices and instruments to listen and sing back and have a go at composing their own piece of music.  The lessons are planned so that each year children follow on from the learning they completed the previous year and clear progression is evident across the school.

The spiral structure of the curriculum enables children to understand musical concepts through a repetition-based approach to learning.  Learning about the same musical concept through different musical activities enables a more secure, deeper learning and mastery of musical skills.  Musical teaching and learning are not neat or linear.  The strands of musical learning, presented within the lesson plans and on-screen resources, are part of the learning spiral.  Over time, children can both develop new musical skills and concepts, and re-visit established musical skills and concepts.  Repeating a musical skill doesn't necessarily mean their progress is slowing down or their development is moving backwards, rather shifting within the spiral.  This allows children to develop a deeper understanding of musical skills and concepts and learning something new.

In addition to the taught music curriculum learners listen to a range of music styles and genres in Collective Worship, as well as having a dedicated 'song practise' assembly every week.