MUSIC
MUSIC
INTENT:
Music and performance are thriving subjects at St Lawrence’s. We endeavour to give our children the skills, experiences and opportunities to gain and build on their own self confidence.
Music and Performance at St. Lawrence’s gives the children the awareness of music and performance as intrinsic and complementary to cultural and historical movements across society. As a result, the subject gives our children the opportunity to listen and appreciate recorded music from artists and composers that they typically lack awareness of when they come into our school.
The school choir and orchestra form the heart of music and performance at St Lawrence’s. The school choir and orchestra annually perform around ten times a year, including outside performances for the residents of St Joseph’s retirement home. Subsequently, children grow in confidence as opportunities for solo and small group performances have allowed children to improve their musicianship.
The intent of the subject of music at St. Lawrence’s is to gain an awareness of the development of the following genres of music through time; classical, jazz and blues, film music, musical theatre, world music and rock and pop.
We take account of prior knowledge highlighting all six genres throughout each child’s time in KS1. By the time a child reaches KS2 they will have an awareness and an individualised opinion on all six genres.
IMPLEMENTATION:
We teach music by providing each child with the opportunity to listen, appreciate and evaluate music from these genres in the form of whole class music afternoons every term, highlighting especially chosen greats in each field of musicianship.
We build on prior learning by harking back to previous pieces studied; encouraging the language of music to develop from KS1 into KS2, eg KS1 children may describe a piece of music as loud, by KS2 they will be describing a piece using the Italian term forte.
We make music and performance memorable by encouraging other subjects such as humanities to be portrayed through performance. In Year 3 children have the opportunity to perform traditional Hawaiian and African tales to complement their Geography topics.
IMPACT:
By the time the children leave St. Lawrence’s they will have acquired worthwhile subject knowledge that will inspire them to take an interest in each subject as they move forward with their education and into adulthood. As a result, many of our past students have gone on to continue with instrumental tuition in high school, joined school choirs and taken part in further performance opportunities.