Music

Music is a unique way of communicating that can inspire and motivate children.  It is a vehicle for personal expression and plays an important part in the personal development of people.  Music reflects the culture and society we live in, and so the teaching and learning of music enables children to understand better the world they live in.  Besides being a creative and enjoyable activity, music can also be a highly academic and demanding subject.  It plays an important part in helping children feel part of a community.  We provide opportunities for all children to create, play, perform and enjoy music, to develop the skills, to appreciate a wide variety of musical forms, and to begin to make judgements about the quality of music.

The objectives of teaching music in our school are to enable children to:

• know and understand how sounds are made and then organised into musical structures;
• know how music is made through a variety of instruments;
• know how music is composed and written down;
• know how music is influenced by the time, place and purpose for which it was written;
• develop the interrelated skills of performing, composing and appreciating music.
• enjoy singing and musical activities.

 Teaching and learning style

At Sidcot Junior School we make music an enjoyable learning experience.  We encourage children to participate in a variety of musical experiences through which we aim to build up the confidence of all children.  Singing lies at the heart of good music teaching.  Our teaching focuses on developing the children’s ability to sing in tune and with other people.  Through singing songs, children learn about the structure and organisation of music.  We teach them to listen to and appreciate different forms of music.  As children get older, we expect them to maintain their concentration for longer, and to listen to more extended pieces of music.  Children develop descriptive skills in music lessons when learning about how music can represent feelings and emotions.  We teach them the disciplined skills of recognising pulse and pitch and we often teach these together.  We also teach children to make music together, to understand musical notation, and to compose pieces.

We recognise that in all classes children have a wide range of musical ability and so we seek to provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child. We achieve this in a variety of ways:

•  provide opportunities for all pupils to share in singing practice experiences.
• setting tasks which are open-ended and can have a variety of responses;
• setting tasks of increasing difficulty (not all children complete all tasks);
• providing resources of different complexity, depending on the ability of the child;
• using classroom assistants to support the work of individuals or groups of children

 Additional music teaching

Children are offered the opportunity to study a musical instrument with peripatetic teachers.  These lessons are normally taught to individuals or small groups of children who have chosen to learn one of a variety of instruments, such as the guitar, violin, cello or flute.  This is in addition to the normal music teaching of the school, and usually takes place during normal lessons, from which children are withdrawn for the duration of the instrumental lesson.