Music (Charanga)

Intent

At Burston & Tivetshall Primary Schools, children gain a firm understanding of what music is through listening, singing, playing, evaluating, analysing, and composing across a wide variety of historical periods, styles, traditions, and musical genres.

We are committed to developing a curiosity for the subject, as well as an understanding and acceptance of the importance of all types of music.

Through whole class music lessons, school choirs and peripatetic music lessons, we aim to provide children with the opportunity to progress to the next level of their creative excellence.

 

Implementation

At Burston & Tivetshall Primary Schools we deliver a clear and comprehensive scheme of work in line with the National Curriculum through Charanga.  Charanga is a scheme of work which offers a topic-based approach to support children’s learning in music.

Charanga is built on the following principles:

• Children will develop their skills in inquiry and critical thinking.
• Children will begin to feel and learn about social connectivity.
• Children will learn about and deepen their musical understanding and connect this with their place in their community.
•  Children will become globally aware and understand what it means to become a citizen of the world.
• Songs and singing lie at the heart of the learning process.
• An authentic musical experience is at the heart of musical learning.
•  At each age and stage of development, musical learning is drawn from engaging with the songs in each unit.
• The scheme is fun, modern, inclusive and engaging.
• The scheme is flexible and can be used as a structured approach to music teaching or can be turned into a customised model for an individual school or class.
• The scheme will help children to understand and connect with different styles of music from various cultures, particularly where cultures intersect.
• Children will gain an understanding of historical and cultural contexts related to music.
• Children will form their own musical opinions and learn to make their own musical decisions.'

Charanga follows a spiral design which allows children to become fully immersed in familiar music-making activities and concepts which are revisited and developed on as children progress through KS1 and KS2 deepening their learning and understanding. For our mixed age classes we follow A and B cycles in KS1 and A-D cycles in KS2 to ensure all knowledge is built on sequentially through each childs time in that class.

Throughout the scheme, children are actively involved in using and developing their singing voices, using body percussion and whole-body actions, and learning to handle and play classroom instruments effectively to create and express their own and others’ music.  Furthermore, Charanga deepens children's understanding of the musical elements:

• Pulse / Beat / Metre
• Rhythm
• Pitch: Melody
• Tempo
• Dynamics
• Timbre
• Texture
• Structure (Form)

In addition, Charanga develops children's understanding of how music relates to culture and their world experiences both in and outside of school through the use of 'Social Questions' which are progressively revisited throughout the scheme.

While Music is not a timetabled weekly lesson in EYFS, music opportunities are planned for as part of continuous provision as well as discrete lessons where appropriate.  Teachers will seek opportunities to teach new concepts and topics through songs.  In KS1 and KS2, children will take part in weekly music lessons.  They will be given opportunities to learn music specific vocabulary in a meaningful context. Through a range of whole class, group and individual activities, children have opportunities to explore sounds, listen actively, compose and perform. skill and given chance for collaboration through composition.

Impact

All children will participate in quality music sessions across the year with each unit of lessons showing the objectives of the lesson; progression; key vocabulary and teacher assessment opportunities.

The Charanga Scheme of Work has clear sequences of lessons, lesson objectives and outlines, along with the resources needed to teach them; this will enable all members of staff (including non-specialists) to deliver well-planned quality lessons, with appropriate differentiation.

Subject Leaders measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Summative assessment of pupil discussions about their learning.
• Recordings of the children’s practical learning.
• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).

Children in Foundation Stage are assessed within Communication & Language Expressive Arts and Design and their progress is tracked termly using PupilAsset