What do we want our KS1 music curriculum to achieve?

• 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 interrelated dimensions of music.

How do we fulfil this in KS1?

Music is taught as a discrete subject, by music specialists, once per week.  It covers different topic based themes and includes all pupils and provide them with the opportunity to be challenged.

Our specialists teach the children one of these each half term.

Percussion

Pupils are introduced to a variety of percussion instruments.  They are given several different tasks and activities that introduce and develop a range of musical terminology and skills from tempo to dynamics.  It is aimed at improving pupils’ confidence and rhythmic ability. Children are taught either:

• Boom whackers: Every song taught via the Boom whacker uses colour-coordinated notes, allowing children who struggle to read from a stave to still participate easily.

or

• African drumming:  children are introduced to the music of a different culture. The learn a little bit of history of the Djembe and how the drums are made, information about the countries themselves and how to play the basic hits and rhythms. All children have the opportunity to play the drums, both as part of the group and in a solo capacity.

Music theory

Through these lessons the children are introduced to basic musical symbols as well as learning what importance they have within music; they will be taught different styles of world music and be encouraged to ask analytical questions; the children will be shown different musical instruments commonly used nationally and internationally. Finally, basic notation is the last thing to be taught introducing the children to crotchets minims and semibreves.

Singing

Pupils will learn a range of songs. They learn keywords and gain an understanding of these words though performance.  They focus on developing their technique through a series of ensemble and solo performances, as well as gain an understanding of song structure.

Song writing

Children learn lots of different techniques to make writing a song a simple process. They choose their own theme and target market and compose a song to a brief of their own creation. Alongside this the class will look at building their musical lexicon with a musical dictionary that they will add to every week.

Keyboard skills

Children are introduced to playing keyboards. They gain confidence in reading music, performing and composing. By working through several exercises looking at notation, timing and rhythm, they learn how to read music in the treble and bass clef and perform a variety of pieces.