Music

The Intent of our Music Curriculum

The music curriculum at J H Godwin is designed to progressively develop children’s skills in the areas of musical appreciation (listening and discussing), performance on instruments and voice, composition and recording and evaluating musical performances. We encourage children to focus on the work of both modern and classical musicians for inspiration and exploration, and to build up a repertoire of techniques and approaches that they can apply in their own compositions. This is intended to develop a love of the arts, creative culture and ignite a love for creating music in acoustic, electronic and digital mediums.

Our decision to prioritise access and inspiration are influenced by the fact that some of our disadvantaged children do not have access to broad musical experiences in their home environment or the opportunity to learn or perform on musical instruments.

Our music curriculum aims to provide all pupils with equal access to a rich, broad, balanced and differentiated music curriculum matched well to their ages, abilities, interests, aptitudes and special needs. It is built to increase pupils’ knowledge, skills and understanding of music as they grow and develop and increase their connections with the world around them. The music curriculum is progressively planned and structured to ensure that learning is continuous and that pupils make good progress with the development of their learning. It also aims to engage the children’s interest and to encourage and motivate them to want to learn to play, practise perform and create music. It intends to offer pupils lots of first-hand experience to reinforce their learning and to underpin their growing knowledge, skills and understanding of the world.

How we Implement our Music Curriculum.

We ensure National Curriculum coverage and progression in music skills and knowledge by following the Charanga music scheme. We also develop an awareness of classical composers and their compositions through our 'Composer of the Week' rolling programme. See below for our composer slideshow.

We also use our 'Word Aware' strategies to also develop music vocaulary across the school. This progression is outlined in the progression document and links to the skills and expectations of Churanga and the National Curriculum. 

Enrichment

Alongside class-based learning, we also have First Access music that offer an opportunity for children to be inspired to continue to learn an instrument beyond school. We have had brass and woodwind tuition, African drumming and ukelele.

Our after-school provision includes Rock school! This offers the opportunity to experience being part of a rock band! Electric guitar, bass guitar, keyboard and drum skills are all taught and we collaborate to play rock songs together.  Another club on offer is songwriting club. Using digital music creation apps such as Garage Band and  Launchpad, we have written songs including 'After All this Time' for the Year 6 Leavers ' assembly. Recorder club also offers the opportunity to learn musical notation and perform traditional music. 

We actively celebrate musical talent including singing and performing during events such as our Winter Wonderland and JHG's Got Talent!

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