Key Curriculum Principles in Music

Music is all around us. It is the soundtrack to our lives. Music connects us through people and places in our ever-changing world. It is creative, collaborative, celebratory and challenging. In our schools, music can bring communities together through the shared endeavour of whole-school singing, ensemble playing, experimenting with the creative process and, through the love of listening to friends and fellow pupils, performing. The sheer joy of music making can feed the soul of a school community, enriching each student while strengthening the shared bonds of support and trust which make a great school. (Model Music Curriculum 2021)

Important Curriculum Documents

We use these to plan our curriculum alongside the planning provided to us by Hampshire Music Service. 

What Music Looks Like at Sarisbury

Music is a key element of our curriculum and is integral to all areas of learning. Our children take part in a range of activities involving music:

• Singing assemblies – these happen every week which involve the whole school. We also re-visit the songs we are learning throughout the week which all link to relevant seasons and themes.
• Strawberry Fayre – this is our annual summer fair which always has a theme where the children learn songs and dance.
• Choir is run by a couple of our teachers and the children perform throughout the year at different events, both inside and outside of school. 
• Each year group performs a Christmas play where the children learn songs and dances. We invite the children at the junior school along to watch too.
• Year 1 create an Easter performance for their families in Spring 2. 
• We take part in World Nursery Rhyme Week each year to bring the whole school together to sing familiar songs. 
• The children help to create year group and class assemblies to celebrate their learning each term where they sing songs they have been learning to share with their parents.
• We have planned music focused days and weeks where the children are involved in a variety of activities and visitors are invited into school to inspire the children. 

Our Focused Composers

Every week we listen to a range of composers in our assemblies to ensure our children have the opportunity to be exposed to a different genres of music. Here is our selection for this year taken from the recommendations in the Music Model Curriculum.

Each class chooses their own tidy up music too which covers a wide range of genres. 

Music Curriculum

The Early Years Framework explains that children at the expected level of development in 'Being Imaginative and Expressive' will:

• Sing a range of well-known nursery rhymes and songs
• Perform songs, rhymes poems and stories with others, and -when appropriate - try to move in time to the music. 

The National Curriculum for music aims to ensure that all pupils:

• perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians
• learn to sing and to use their voices, to create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, use technology appropriately and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence
• understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the interrelated dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations

Here is a copy of our progression of skills which we follow across the school to ensure children are continuing to develop their musical skills. 

Below is an overview to show our music learning throughout the year in the individual year groups. We use the planning provided by Hampshire Music Service which has been adapted to meet the needs of our school, matching topics where possible. 

Year R

Year 1

Year 2

Click on the websites below to access free resources, activities and games to use with your child at home.

Harri Heart

Harri Heart helps to keep us safe inside and outside of school.

In Music they helps to keep us safe by:

• Ensuring we teach the children how to use the instruments safely
• Ensuring music isn't played too loudly so it doesn't hurt our ear drums
• Ensuring all of the staff and visitors that come to work with our children have the appropriate DBS certificate
• Ensuring risk assessments are carried our for any musical trips that are off the premises
• Ensuring volunteers are appropriately supervised whilst they are in school