Music

Intent

At St Mary and St Michael Catholic Primary School, we place our children at the heart of everything we do and offer them an engaging Music curriculum where every child has the right to high quality teaching and learning opportunities. Music is a unique way of communicating that can inspire and motivate children. It is a vehicle for personal expression, and it can play 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 better understand the world they live in. Besides being a creative and enjoyable activity, music can also be a highly academic and demanding subject. It also plays an important part in helping children feel part of our 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.

Statutory Requirements

Statutory requirements for the teaching and learning of Music are laid out in the Bailiwick of Guernsey Curriculum, the Music Entitlement Document and in the Development Matters document for Early Years.

Music Bailiwick Curriculum Aims

Learners should build secure knowledge of the following:

1. How creative ideas can be developed in response to different stimuli and imaginative thinking.
2. How different art forms communicate and evoke moods, thoughts and ideas.
3. That designing, creating and performing require discipline, control, technique ad practice.
4. How and why people from different times and cultures have used the arts to express ideas and communicate meaning.
5. That accepted forms and conventions can give structure and purpose to artistic works but can be adapted and changed.

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 analysing music.