Music
Please find our Music Development Plan for 2024 - 2025 here.
Intent:
At St Pius X Catholic Primary school we aim to make music an enjoyable learning experience for all children. We want children to feel safe exploring and performing music, making each individual a valued part of something bigger, through class work, school performances and wider experiences, developing their confidence as performers. Our intention for the children is to develop their acquired skills year on year with encouraged ‘topic lead’ and stand-alone lessons. We aim for children to be able to recognise music as: an outlet for self-expression, as a tool to self-regulate, enabling them to identify feelings and moods, and distinguish layers and textures in music; and later recognise how these skills can be linked to our own wellbeing. As children develop their understanding of the factors that influence music we hope to foster in them a respect for music’s place in the arts and other cultures.
Implementation:
Through the delivery of our International Primary curriculum, we provide as many opportunities for children to experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the inter-related dimensions of music. The children are able to develop their scientific understanding of how sound works, whilst also playing musical instruments with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression. Within their historical studies, children are able to understand how the history of music has developed and explore different genres and the cultural influences that led to their creation.
To supplement the children's musical education within the International Primary Curriculum, all pupils are also taught through the Charanga scheme. Please find the progression of knowledge and skills for each year group here:
At St Pius X we are passionate about teaching children how to work with others to compose music and perform for an audience. We provide a range of opportunities throughout the year where children are able to create, rehearse and perform in front of the rest of our school community. Furthermore, our music curriculum is intertwined with our catholic ethos, so the majority of our performances are related to a significant point in the church's calendar. At Easter, Christmas and other Holy Days of Obligation throughout the year, the children are provided with opportunities to perform in solo and ensemble contexts. In addition to this, all children in the school are able to enjoy collective worship through performing hymns together weekly. We are also committed to providing our children with opportunities to perform to larger audiences within a wider community. Children in years 2 and 4 love taking part in the annual music festival, where local schools come together to form one large choir.
Extra-Curricular Opportunities
We are incredibly lucky at St Pius X to be able to provide children with private music instrument lessons to complement their work in class. Pupils in Key Stage 1 and 2 have the opportunity to learn the piano, the guitar, the drums and have singing lessons.
The children in years 5 and 6 thoroughly enjoy being part of the choir, where they regularly perform to the local community (especially during the festive period). Every year, the choir are also fortunate enough to perform at the Young Voices concert at the O2 in London. It is such an incredible opportunity for the children to perform on a large stage and be part of a choir with 9,000 other children across London and the South East.
Please click here to see how much fun the children had at Young Voices 2023!
Impact:
Music is an integral part of our curriculum at St Pius X. We create confident musicians, who are proud to share their talents and perform to a wide range of audiences. We assess our children's musical understanding through not only their performance abilities and the development of their musical skills, but also through their cultural, historical and contextual understanding of music.
Please click here to see our creative arts in action across the school.