Music

 “Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything” -Plato-

Our music curriculum at Charlton, aims to provide all pupils with a high- quality music education, which both inspires and captivates a love for music and an education that fulfils a deep level of spirituality within them.

The music curriculum is intended to develop a life-long love of learning musicology and with this, increase confidence, creativity and imagination of all pupils.

All pupils should have a range of activities to develop their talents in all aspects including: listening and appraising, finding/making pulse & rhythm, singing, playing instruments, improvisation, composition and performance through our scheme ‘Charanga’.

The children are encouraged to learn a variety of instruments at school, including: clubs and class lessons that offer drums, ukuleles, keyboards, recorders and ocarinas.

As a school, we organise opportunities and participate in collaborative and ‘in-house; projects that enable children to share their musical skills at events both in and outside of school. We also invite specialist teachers to teach a variety of instruments to children such as ukuleles, guitars and drums. We teach and support children to be patient as they learn a new instrument/or song as well as enabling children to show forgiveness for their own musical trials and tribulations and mark these as great learning experiences and to see these as opportunities to develop perseverance within their own musicology studies.

Most importantly, music should play an important role for children to express themselves and be thoughtful towards others’ ideas and performances, so that all children feel part of a community that supports them and their individuality- offering that safe space of sanctuary.
 

Fundamental music skills learnt throughout the curriculum:

• Listening and Appraising

• Musicianship
• Singing
• Playing instruments and Notation
• Improvisation
• Composition
• Performing and Sharing

Contributions to other subjects:

We design our curriculum to enable children to have links which are cross curricular to other subjects. This can range from using computing equipment to help record, create and explore, or sing in microphones for a themed topic. Our approach offers ways of introducing music to impact on learning where conventional methods are not feasible such as using Dalcroze and/or Kodaly methods. Teachers use music to enhance learning, make it interactive and provide cognitive learning opportunities for children that enable them to grasp concepts. An example of this would be; enabling children to learn tricky words in phonics through songs or using music to help develop auditory literacy skills.

We hope to inspire children to become musicians and be able to express themselves effectively through their love of music.

Model Music Curriculum: We are very excited to announce that each year group will be using the Model Music Curriculum guidelines from September 2023. The Model Music Curriculum is a non-statutory document produced originally by the Department of Education to help support schools and their music curriculum from KS1-KS3. You can see the current curriculum overview with the Model Music Curriculum on the page below.