Music

“Music is a world within itself, with a language we all understand.”

Stevie Wonder

Our curriculum follows the Kapow Primary scheme of work and exposes our children to music in a variety of styles and genres from all around the world and across generations. We teach the children to respect and appreciate music of all traditions and communities as our curriculum identifies and promotes Music as a world-wide, empowering force for positive change.

Lessons are engaging and thought provoking as children are encouraged and supported in building the skills not only needed to express themselves musically but also to enhance transferable skills such as creative thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, teamwork, and leadership. We are dedicated to facilitating the opportunities and learning necessary for every child to find their own, unique musical voice.

We aim to provide a music curriculum that inspires children to explore and enjoy singing, composing, and performing in a variety of ways to build confidence, develop creativity, and produce a unique sense of achievement and fulfilment.  As with all subjects in our Trust, we are determined that children who are at risk of underachieving have their needs skilfully and consistently met. We strive to give every child equal opportunity to succeed in their musical knowledge and experience regardless of their starting point on their journey of musical discovery.

Kapow Primary’s Music scheme provides a spiral curriculum with a holistic approach to music, in which the National Curriculum is fulfilled through five individual strands (outlined below) which are woven together to create engaging and enriching learning experiences:

​​​​​​​

• Performing
• Listening
• Composing
• The history of music
• The inter-related dimensions of music

Each unit combines these strands with cross-curricular links in a way that is designed to capture pupils’ imagination and encourage them to explore music enthusiastically. Throughout the curriculum, the practice and application of the inter-related dimensions of music are embedded in each session so skills are rapidly learnt, revised and applied in a variety of different contexts, genres and settings.

As Kapow follows the National Curriculum, children will be taught effectively how to recognise, name and communicate using the inter-related dimensions of music (pitch, duration, tempo, timbre, structure, texture and dynamics) before using these expressively as they improvise and compose using both the voice as an instrument and tuned and untuned instruments respectively and with accuracy and control. 

Alongside the units Kapow provides, there will also be opportunities provided for pupils to experience and succeed in whole class ensemble teaching using a variety of different tuned instruments.

Through our curriculum, the profile and enthusiasm for Music has been greatly improved across the trust and we are proud of our community of motivated, thoughtful and creative musicians who enjoy performing, composing and appreciating the magic and mechanics of music.

Music is an integral part of wider school life and our curriculum is enriched through singing assemblies, choir and music tuition as well as showcases of different genres and instrumental workshops to ensure that music is seen as a transformative skill for life with the power to influence cultural, social and historical contexts in meaningful ways.

Within lessons and around school, pupils readily articulate how music makes them feel and their personal preferences using key terminology and links to previous learning. Confidence is clear as pupils perform and compose with tuned and untuned instruments across genres and are able to identify the inter-related dimensions of music with increasing accuracy as they progress through the scheme.