Music

Intent

Music has the potential to spark a child’s imagination, and to help develop self-confidence and creativity.  It can also give children the tools to express themselves in different ways.

Here at The Phoenix Federation, we want to foster in our children, a life-long love of music, and to help them understand and accept the important role that music plays in all our lives.

Through our music curriculum, we aim to help children develop transferable skills such as team-working, leadership, creative thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, in addition to presentation and performance skills.  These skills are vital to children’s development as learners, as they will be able to apply them across the curriculum, as well as in their general lives outside and beyond school.

Implementation

Our curriculum focuses on developing the skills, knowledge and understanding that children need in order to become confident performers, composers, and listeners.

It also introduces children to music from all around the world, and teaches them to respect and appreciate the music of all traditions and communities.

In line with our Tackling Race Inequality in Education Pledge, we are embedding race equality into our listening programme, in order to ensure that all our children see themselves and their families reflected in the music they study.

Our main teaching resource is Kapow because it offers:

• a comprehensive scheme of topic-based units of work
• easy-to-follow lesson plans which cover the skills that children need to learn
• CPD videos for teachers to watch before teaching each lesson

Children in KS1 follow a different unit of work from the programme every half term.

In KS2, all children have the opportunity to learn an instrument. At Grinling Gibbons, we teach recorders in Years 3 and 4, and Steel Pans in Years 5 and 6. They have a weekly lesson taught by an expert in that instrument, and wherever possible, they perform what they have learnt to an audience.

In the summer term, KS2 children also follow a Kapow unit of work, to ensure that they cover the composition and improvisation aspects of music learning, as we prepare to celebrate our end of year Carnival.

All classes from Years 1 – 6, have a singing session every week.

Impact

Our Computing curriculum at the Phoenix Federation is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression and prepare children for their life ICT journey. During their time at school pupils should demonstrate a variety of different skills and understanding.

• Progress that pupils are making in terms of knowing more, remembering more and being able to do more is clear.
• Children can understand and apply the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science, including abstraction, logic, algorithms and data representation.
• Children can analyse problems in computational terms and have repeated practical experience of writing computer programs in order to solve such problems.
• Children can evaluate and apply information technology, including new or unfamiliar technologies, analytically to solve problems.
• Children are responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information and communication technology.
• Pupils can explain orally what they have learnt and what they would like to learn in the future.
• Children can identify key figures who are relatable to them and their ethnic origins.