Music

Music at St Mary's Catholic Primary School

At St Mary’s Catholic Primary School, we aim to promote musical education, allowing children to express their creativity, take risks and develop their musical and artistic skills. We encourage students to reflect on their learning through the lens of Catholic values and virtues, which are central to our school and the Our Lady of the Magnificat Multi-Academy Trust. Students serve God by singing, playing instruments, and participating in mass and worship sessions, using and enhancing their God-given talents to reach their full creative potential. We aim to offer a broad, stimulating, and progressive music curriculum within school hours and through a range of extra-curricular activities. This curriculum is delivered through exceptional music teaching and a range of musical experiences. At St Mary’s, students have access to a variety of instruments, music lessons and plentiful opportunities for singing and performance throughout their school experience. These musical activities build their confidence, concentration, self-discipline, and teamwork. Children are given the opportunity to experience live musical theatre during educational trips and visits, and events such as talent shows and showcases allow children to share their musical gifts with peers.

Intent:

At St Mary's, we have designed our music curriculum to inspire a passion for music in our pupils, fostering an appreciation for the art form and nurturing a life-long love of music. Our approach helps children develop their skills, knowledge, and understanding, enabling them to become confident performers, composers, and listeners. Through exposure to a wide variety of music genres from around the world and across generations, we highlight the multicultural nature of our school, using music as a medium to explore and celebrate both British and global cultures. Pupils will refine their musical abilities through singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, composing music, and responding to what they hear. Additionally, the curriculum promotes the development of transferrable skills, such as teamwork, leadership, creative thinking, decision-making, and performance, which support their growth as learners and have broad applications both inside and outside the classroom.

Implementation

Our music curriculum is implemented progressively, starting in the Early Years, where children’s musical awareness is nurtured to support their imagination and creativity. The curriculum ensures that the individual strands of music—performing, listening, composing, the history of music, and the interrelated dimensions of music—are interwoven in each lesson, creating an engaging and enriching learning experience that evolves as pupils progress through the years and key stages.

Pupils’ knowledge is built upon year after year, following Kapow Primary’s Music scheme of work, which ensures that previous skills and knowledge are revisited and developed through well-designed, interactive lessons. As pupils’ skills advance, their understanding of the history of music, composition, and the interrelated dimensions of music also deepens. In addition, we collaborate with County Music, who provide specialist musical instrument tuition for each class over a half term, and offer opportunities for students who wish to learn an instrument, with lessons delivered by specialized music teachers who visit the school.

What a typical lesson looks like:

Rewind: Reinforicing prior knowledge and prepares pupils for new skills. 

Teach it: Introduce new concept, technique or piece of music. Interactive explanations and modelling are key at this stage. 

Practise it: Pupils engage in hands-on practice, either individually or in groups. Scaffolding is used to support learning and pupils recieve feedback. 

Assessment: Evaluate pupils understanding through informal and formal assesmnet. The goal is to check progress. 

Impact:

Whilst in school, children have access to a varied music curriculum, which allows students to discover areas of personal talent, enjoyment and self-expression. Through music lessons and our wider curriculum offer children develop a sense of achievement and self-confidence. Music will also develop an understanding of culture and history through exposure to a wide range of musical styles, genres and composers. Children are able to enjoy music as a listener, creator and performer. They can analyse music and discuss their own understanding using appropriate musical vocabulary.  Children will be inspired to pursue their own musical talents and interests as they enter the next Key Stage.

Please find below our yearly plan for music, outling the units that will be delievered in each year group.

Our subject development plan outlines our goals and priorities for music teaching for the 24-25 academic year.

Composer of the Term 

Each term our school explores the life and legacy of a renowned composer. The children discover how they shaped the workd of music. They also have the opportunity to listen to and appreciate the composers most iconic works. 

Sping 2

Composer-of-the-Term-John-Williams.pdf