Intent
At the Oaks Infant School we feel that music should be accessible for all children of all abilities and backgrounds. Music can change the way children feel, think and act, providing benefits for children’s emotional health and well-being.
It allows opportunity for personal expression and plays an important part in the personal development of each individual, creating a life-long love of music. Our curriculum introduces children to music from all around the world and across generations, teaching children to respect and appreciate music of all traditions and communities. To enable children to nurture their musical talents we use the ‘Kapow Primary Music Scheme,’ where possible linking to our topic work. This is a program where children will develop the musical skills of singing, playing untuned instruments, improvising and composing music and listening and responding to music. They will develop an understanding of the history and cultural context of the music that they listen to and learn how music can be written down. Through music, our curriculum helps children develop transferable skills such as team-work, leadership, creative thinking, problem solving, decision-making, presentation and performance skills. These skills are transferable skills for life-long learning.
Implementation
At the Oaks Infant School we take a holistic approach to music and use strands from the Kapow Music Scheme to create an engaging learning experience for all our pupils from EYFS to Year 2 whilst meeting the requirements of the National Curriculum. The strands are as follows:
Pupils receive weekly music lessons and a weekly singing assembly. Each ‘Kapow’ unit, the children follow, contains a combination of these strands within a cross-curricular topic, to encourage our children to explore music enthusiastically and use their imagination. They will be taught to sing fluently and expressively both in class lessons and during weekly singing assemblies. They will have opportunities to play untuned instruments and tuned instruments, such as glockenspiels. They will learn to recognize, demonstrate and name the interrelated dimensions of music – pitch, duration, tempo, timbre, structure, texture and dynamics and will use these in their own music making and compositions.
The Kapow Primary Music Scheme enables children to return to previous learning and build on their key skills and vocabulary that they have developed, following a spiral curriculum. This ensures a clear progression route from EYFS to Year 2. In each lesson pupils will actively participate in musical activities drawn from a range of styles, genres and traditions, developing their musical skills and understanding of how music works. All lessons allow children to work independently, in pairs and group work and are ‘hands on’ incorporating movement and dance elements as well as cross curricular links, such as topic work.
The Kapow Primary Music scheme ensures that all children can access the lessons and that there are opportunities to stretch pupils’ learning when required. We provide real life musicians into our school, such as African drumming and Indian dancing to further enrich our music curriculum.
Impact
Our music curriculum is planned to ensure progression from EYFS to Year 2 and ensure pupils develop a range of skills to enable them to succeed from EYFS through to the end of their schooling. We carry out both formative and summative assessments for each unit covered in Kapow by observations through Tapestry, subject monitoring, pupil discussions and Kapow’s assessment tool. Children will: