Music
“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind,
flight to the imagination and life to everything.”
Plato
Subject Coordinator: Mrs Gemma Halliwell
Subject Link Governor: Lorraine Smith
External Links: Charanga Music Scheme, Entrust Advice Service and Staffordshire Music Partnership
Vision and INtent
At Cheadle Primary School we believe that music contributes to the school curriculum by providing a powerful and distinctive form of communication and expression.
Music can change the way children feel, think and act. It affects emotions and moods providing the opportunity for personal expression, reflection and emotional well-being. Music is an integral part of culture past and present.
The teaching of music deepens and extends everyday experiences, providing new opportunities and forging important links between the home, the school and the outside world.
Music Coordinator
As music Co-ordinator, my role is to ensure the children develop in their musicianship and help to foster a lifelong love of music. Children are exposed to a range of music through our programme of study and can deepen their understanding of the technical, expressive and constructive elements of music. At Cheadle Primary School, we celebrate music not only through our thorough curriculum, but through wider experiences too such visits from performing musicians, end of year performances and opportunities to participate in the school choir or receive peripatetic music lessons.
Curriculum and implementation
At Cheadle Primary School we use a musical programme called Charanga which provides teachers with engaging and exciting whiteboard resources to support all the requirements of the national curriculum.
In line with guidance and the curriculum for music, this scheme moves away from the previous levels and learning objective/outcome concepts to an integrated, practical, exploratory and child-led approach to musical learning.
The interrelated dimensions of music of listening, performing and composition weave through the units to encourage the development of musical skills .
Children grow in their musicianship through a range of varied warm up games and various tasks. Overtime, children build up their skills in learning how music is created, produced and communicated through the interrelated dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.
They will have the opportunity to develop their performance skills vocally and on both violin and glockenspiel over time. The units of work review music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and tradition, including the works of the great composers and musicians giving children not only depth, but also a breadth of musical understanding.
Core Knowledge and skills
Please click on the links below to see our subject progression documents for music.
assessment
Ongoing teacher assessment is always vitally important. Some teacher assessment will be done informally through class discussion. Children’s performances (both of own compositions and performances of existing pieces) should be recorded on tablets at various stages of production and shared with the children to aid their continuing development as musicians. Children should be able to clearly see through this formative assessment where they can make changes to their ongoing work to make progress. Recordings therefore should be a purposeful tool, rather than a summative piece at the end of a unit.
cultural capital and enrichment
Cheadle Primary school has provided its children with a most rich and varied array of extra-curricular activities in recent years and we are now beginning to be able to relinquish some of our much treasured musical events that mean so much to the children. In recent years, children have partaken in a carol service at the local church, sang in The Victoria Hall alongside other schools in the area and have participated in end of year musical theatre productions such as ‘The Greatest Showman’ and ‘Joseph’ (directed and choregraphed by Graham Tudor of Tread Theatre Company). At Cheadle Primary School, pupils also have the opportunity to take up peripatetic music lessons for flute, guitar and clarinet. We also offer a full choir in KS2, who frequently perform in assemblies and at special events. In this last term we have also been able to welcome back into school the talents of Entrust Music Service for a ‘Magic Themed’ musical concert including popular pieces such as ‘The Can-Can’, ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ and the film music to ‘Harry Potter’.
peripatetic lessons
We currently offer lessons for flute, clarinet and guitar, however, if your child is curious about a different instrument, please contact the school office to see if we can make enquiries.
What our pupils say
"I love learning to play the violin!" (Y4)
"I love singing songs in class." (Y3)
"I love learning new songs and music" (Y4)
“I’ve really enjoyed learning how to rap! (Y5)”
"I enjoy playing the glockenspiel" (Y3)
"I love choir!" (Y6)
Subject policy
Music 22.pdf