Music Curriculum at Geoffrey Field Junior School

The aim of our Music curriculum

At Geoffrey Field Junior School it is our aim that our pupils leave us with:

• an understanding of a wide variety of musical genres through listening and appraising activities.
• the ability to perform both vocally and instrumentally.
• an understanding of formal written music notation.
• the ability to compose their own simple melodies. 
• an understanding of key musical vocabulary. 

Our Music Curriculum

Our curriculum is designed to develop key musical knowledge and skills that will allow them to explore a variety of key areas (History of music, reading and writing musical notation, performing, composing and musical terminology). To do this, we follow the music scheme Charanga. Charanga enables children to understand musical key areas through a repetition-based approach to learning. Each unit comprises listening and appraising, playing a simple glockenspiel part and composing and notating their own melodies. Over time, children can both develop new musical skills and re-visit established musical skills and key areas.

 

How is the curriculum organised?

Our music curriculum is organised into units of work. Each year group will have 3 units of work over the year. In years 4 and 5 the children have external Steel Pans lessons as one of their main units. 

	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5	Year 6
Autumn	Charanga Unit Year 3 production	Charanga Unit	Steel Pans	Charanga Unit
Spring	Charanga Unit	Year 4 production	Charanga Unit	Charanga Unit
Summer	Charanga Unit	Steel Pans	Charanga Unit	Year 6 production

In addition to the lessons, the children are offered many musical opportunities. During assemblies, children have further opportunities to listen to a wide variety of music, to sing together both in unison and in parts and to perform to an audience. Throughout the year there are opportunities for all children to perform in year group assemblies or productions. 

There are also extended opportunities available to all to sing with the school choir and perform at venues such as The Hexagon and to learn to play an instrument such as the recorder, glockenspiel or boomwhacker through an after school club or university course.

GFJS Local Curriculum:

These key areas from our local curriculum are woven into our music curriculum

• Understanding and awareness of the wider world:  Through music the children develop an understanding and appreciation of different musical styles and genres from around the world. 
• Experiential: Music is a richly experiential subject. Through our music curriculum children are given the opportunity to perform together at a variety of in school and out of school events. 
• Vocabulary: Through music, the children are exposed to a variety of new vocabulary linked to this subject.  They have the opportunity to find out what the new music specific words mean and use them within lessons.