Music

Music Intent

Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon. (The National Curriculum)

At Radcliffe on Trent Infant and Nursery school, our music curriculum intends to inspire creativity and self expression and encourages our children on their musical journey as well as giving them opportunities to connect with others. We aim to follow the requirements of the National Curriculum; providing a broad, balanced and differentiated curriculum and ensuring the progressive development of musical concepts, knowledge and skills. By listening and responding to different musical styles, finding their voices as singers and performers and as composers, they will be empowered to become confident, reflective musicians.

At Radcliffe on Trent Infant and Nursery school, we recognise that music plays an important part in helping children feel part of a community, and so we provide opportunities for all children to create, play, perform and enjoy music both in class and to an audience.

The aims of our music curriculum are to develop pupils who:

• Enjoy and have an appreciation for music
• Listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions.
• Listen to and evaluate the work of great composers.
• Sing and use their voice to create different effects.
• Create and compose music, both on their own and with others.
• Use a range of musical language
• Make judgements and express personal preferences about the quality and style of music.
• Have opportunities to play a variety of instruments, both tuned and untuned.
• Take part on performances with an awareness of audience.

Music Teaching 

At Radcliffe on Trent Infant and Nursery School we know that music promotes positivity, self confidence and a sense of community.  Therefore, we believe that it should be part of our everyday practice, whether through singing assemblies, extra curricular activities, physical activity or music lessons.

In the Foundation Stage we sing a variety of songs and explore the different sounds of instruments.  We create movements in response to music and make up our own rhythms.  We learn to represent our own ideas, thoughts and feelings through music and dance.

In Key Stage 1 the children learn to use their voices to sing expressively through learning songs and chants linked to their topic.  They begin to develop an awareness of music (pitch, duration, tempo, timbre, texture, structure) through listening to a range of live and recorded music and exploring and playing tuned and untuned instruments.  We have a class set of glockenspiels that we use in our lessons.

We use Charanga to support our music teaching, this is an online scheme provided by Nottinghamshire Music hub with lots of visual aids and interactive resources to support our children's learning about music.  Our curriculum is further enriched with 'Drumba' in Year 1 and learning to play the ukulele in Year 2.

We have a wonderful school choir that perform regularly at events at school and in the community.  We also take part in the annual Young Voices concert where thousands of children come together to jointly perform a selection of songs.  We are hoping that we will be able to return to the Sheffield Arena in 2022.