Music

Our Intent, Implementation and Impact statement for Music

Intent

At Horndean, we believe that a high-quality music education should engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. 

The national curriculum for music aims to ensure that all pupils:

  • perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians
  • learn to sing and to use their voices, to create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, use technology appropriately and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence
  • understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the interrelated dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.

At Horndean Infant School we intend to ensure all children are taught to:

  • use their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes
  • play tuned and untuned instruments musically
  • listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music
  • experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the inter-related dimensions of music.

Implement

Our Year F and KS1 music curriculum follows the Hampshire Music Service scheme, which is an integrated, practical, exploratory and child-led approach to musical learning. All musical learning in this scheme is built around the interrelated dimensions of music: pulse, rhythm, pitch, tempo, dynamics, timbre, texture, structure and notation. 

Each unit of work consists of the strands of musical learning which correspond with the national curriculum for music and are organised by:

  1. Listening and Appraising
  2. Musical Activities
  • Warm up games
  • Singing
  • Playing instruments
  • Improvisation
  • Composition
  • Performing

The HMS scheme enables children to understand musical concepts through musical games, singing and playing instruments all in a fun way. Learning about musical concepts through different musical activities enables a more secure, deeper learning and mastery of musical skills. Children receive half-termly units of teaching. The units are delivered as stand alone units. In the second half of the Autumn term all year groups prepare for a Christmas show in their music lessons. All staff receive an overview of each unit to ensure delivery of the unit is the same for every child.

Singing is a particular strength of the school and all children learn songs to sing in weekly assemblies. A designated time for singing is timetabled, in addition to music lessons. In the Summer term all children perform songs to parents at a special concert to celebrate music and dance. We also offer Year 2 children the opportunity to learn the Ukulele through an after school club.

Throughout the academic year musicians are invited to perform live to the children to enable our children to enjoy live music.

Impact

At Horndean Infant School we aim for all pupils to leave with the confidence to:

  • enjoy singing and use their voices expressively and to have participated in performing live
  • play a range of untuned instruments proficiently and confidently 
  • play a glockenspiel proficiently and confidently
  • have listened to a wide range of music covering a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians
  • be able to voice their opinions about a piece of music using musical terminology
  • have experienced live music performed to them
  • be able to experiment with improvising using their voices and instruments
  • have an understanding of the inter-related dimensions of music with a particular focus on rhythm, pitch and pulse 

We aim for all of our children to leave us with a keenness to develop their musical knowledge and expertise in the next stage of their education and to have an appreciation of the diversity of music.

We hope all our children have a life-long love of music in all its amazing forms.

Do, Know and Remember Sheet (DKRs)

Our units of work are supported by,  ‘Do, Know and Remember’ (DKR) overviews that detail what the children already know, what they will need to know in the new unit of work, key vocabulary, what comes next and how this fits into the world of work to contextualise each individual subject.