Rationale:

Our curriculum is underpinned by our five core values, supporting pupils' academic and personal development, making learning and knowledge gain meaningful, developing pupils’ character, and preparing them to be successful Eskdalers now and into the future. We achieve this by introducing pupils to the idea of our ‘Think like a..’ approach to their learning, enabling them to become a little more ‘expert’.

‘Think like a…’, including listen talk, write and read like a Musician is central to pupils, learning and designed to develop pupil oracy and vocabulary skills to enable them to use musical language meaningfully when talking about music.

When reading like a Musician, pupils have opportunities to read across the curriculum to support the knowledge and vocabulary to be gained in the subject of Music.

 When ‘Thinking like a Musician’, pupils will acquire knowledge, enabling them to skilfully attempt and apply their understanding. The music curriculum is organised into musical disciplines, including listening & appraising, improvising, composing, playing & performing and singing -pupils revisit these key skills (disciplinary knowledge) throughout their primary journey at increasing degrees of challenge and complexity.

In addition to the substantive knowledge required to be successful within each discipline, pupils will be taught knowledge and skills within the key concepts of musical development: Music Theory – including The Musical Elements; Pulse, Pitch Rhythm, Tempo, Texture, Timbre, Dynamics, Structure & Duration, and have an understanding of different genres and the History of Music.

Music is taught following the ‘Think like a Musician’ process model approach:

Exposure - Where children ask the question ‘What’s it all about and why?’ and find out about the specific area of music being studied, for example, a specific genre, instrument or skill.

Practical – ‘How do we do it?’ Where appropriate, children apply music theory and find out/learn the skills involved in engaging and progressing with the topic.

Application – ‘Let’s do it!’ Children engage in the practical activity with an ‘I do, we do, you do’ approach and where relevant practice individually, in pairs and small groups.

Evaluate and Feedback – Children discuss the question ‘How did it go?’ with the support of the teacher and peers, to formally and informally assess performances and improve work based on relevant feedback.    

The teaching of Music is delivered through our method of teaching (pedagogy) and incorporates meta-cognitive strategies to enable all pupils to retain the learning of knowledge. This is typically applied by:

• Activating Prior Knowledge
• Small step teaching delivery
• Independent practice
• Feedback

How we adapt the Music Curriculum for SEND Pupils

As part of our quality first approach to teaching, we use a range of strategies to support SEND pupils to access the Music curriculum. The document below details examples of the adaptations that are made to support pupils in class.

• Adaptive Teaching - Music.pdf