Our Vision

At Catcott Primary School, our vision is to provide high quality music lessons that encourage children to pursue musical interests and develop a love for music. Children will develop their knowledge and understanding of music through listening and being creative. We strive to increase children’s independence, self-confidence and sense of achievement by allowing them to compose and perform.

Rationale

At Catcott, we organise the teaching of Music into the following areas: Performing, Listening, Composing and the History of Music. The inter-related dimensions of music are: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure, appropriate musical notation.

We aim to provide opportunities for all children to:

• Listen to a wide range of music, noticing a variety of different instruments
• Explore using different musical instruments
• Develop singing skills
• Develop an understanding of rhythm and pitch
• Learn technical vocabulary
• Learn about a range of composers, both historical and current

We follow a curriculum which allows children to perform, listen to, review and evaluate a range of historical periods, genres and styles and explore different musicians and composers. Children will learn how music is created and they will learn specific vocabulary: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure. They will learn appropriate musical notations.  

We implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. Our curriculum aims to ensure progression and full coverage of the National Curriculum through carefully planned projects and learning opportunities that allow children to revisit and build upon prior knowledge.

We assess the children on a formative basis which informs our planning and enables teachers to adapt future lessons accordingly. Lessons will conclude with a perform and share opportunity, allowing teachers to assess against the lesson’s learning objectives. This also develops children’s skills when performing to an audience. We support children with additional needs by adapting tasks and learning outcomes. 

Weekly singing assemblies are planned by the subject lead. The children develop their vocal skills by using their voices in a variety of ways, engaging in vocal warm ups, singing together and singing in parts. Children practise singing songs ready for whole school performances for celebration assemblies such as Harvest, Christmas, Easter and other celebrations.