Music at the West Exmoor Federation
At The West Exmoor Federation, we believe that music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. We aim to deliver a high-quality music education that engages and inspires our children to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As our children progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to a wide range of high quality music.
Intent
The national curriculum for music aims to ensure that all children:
- 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 inter-related dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.
Implementation
Across the West Exmoor Federation, we deliver the music curriculum through Charanga. This ensures that:
- The federation is using a reliable and effective scheme. As it is used across the whole federation our children are taught using the same structure for each lesson. There is a performance element throughout all of the units taught.
- Our children learn to perform, listen to and review music (from historical periods, genres, styles and traditions and including great composers). They learn to sing and to use their voices to create and compose music.
- We sing, as a whole school and/or federation, regularly and ‘perform’ at church as part of our Harvest, Nativity and Easter Services. We also put on a Summer Production which gives all of our children the opportunity to sing on stage.
In addition to following Charanga, all of our children are given the opportunity to:
- Watch live music through visiting musicians, theatre trips, attending the Music Mix Festival, etc.
- Learn to play a musical instrument if they wish to.
Impact
- Our children will experience a range of music from different genres and eras.
- They will have an understanding of musical language and how to use it in context when discussing a piece of music and critiquing their own composed pieces.
- Our children will develop performance skills through playing a range of instruments across the curriculum and performing them to an audience. This will foster a love of music through the knowledge of musical history and the origin of music.