Music

At Poplars our music curriculum is an ambitious, coherent curriculum that equips pupils for future success in regards of a holistic music education. We ensure that all children receive the music education to which they are entitled. Our curriculum is coherently planned and sequenced towards building sufficient knowledge and skills in preparation for future learning and opportunities. Our Units of Work enable children to understand musical concepts through a repetition-based approach to learning. Learning about the same musical concept through different musical activities enables a more secure, deeper learning and mastery of musical skills.

Our curriculum aligns with our own values at Poplars:

Courage: We encourage pupils to perform musical pieces to their peers and wider audiences within our community. This will be achieved through mini performances within classes in addition to a yearly music festival, where the children will showcase their learning to a wider audience.

Honesty: At Poplars, we intend to regularly talk with the children and assess the effectiveness of our music curriculum, making changes where necessary and adapting to the needs of our pupils.

Aspiration: Through the teaching of musical artists, we want our children to hold high aspirations within a career in music. We will achieve this by incorporating a Poplars radio station, where children can talk to musical guests, perform their own musical work, listen to a wide range of music and talk open and honestly about their likes and dislikes.

Kindness: Within musical lessons, performances and discussions, teacher will hold high expectations of how our children show kindness to one another. Performances will be paired with positive and constructive feedback from both peers and teachers.

Collaboration: Within music sessions, children will have the opportunity to work with each other and combine their musical talents to create their own pieces of music. Being collaborative will encompass all our key values within music and will help incorporate a kind, caring and ambitious ethos within our subject.

We ensure , including the work of great composers and musicians. In addition, pupils learn to sing and to use their voices; create and compose music on their own and with others; have an opportunity to learn a musical instrument; use music technology appropriately; understand and explore how music is created and produced. We are aspirational with our expectations of pupils learning within music and we aim to foster a love of music and ensure that they leave our school with a fully rounded music education. We will achieve this by planning engaging lessons, providing enrichment within music, offer after school clubs, showcase musical performances and inviting exciting guests into our school to immerse the children in our subject.

By the end of Early Years Foundation Stage, pupils will:

Sing (and enjoy singing) a range of nursery rhymes
Be confident exploring making sounds using a range of objects

Make movements along with music

By the end of Key Stage One, pupils will:

Be confident using their voices to make chants, sing known songs together and have opportunities to perform as a soloist and in an ensemble
Play tuned and untuned instruments along to music, using informal symbols as notation

Listen to a range of live and recorded music from various genres and talk about music showing their understanding.
Be able to experiment with sounds using some of the inter-related dimensions of music - pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.

By the end of key stage 2 we expect all pupils to:

develop an understanding of musical composition, organising and manipulating ideas within musical structures and reproducing sounds from aural memory

play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and playing musical instruments with increasing accuracy
improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the interrelated dimensions of music.
listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory
use and understand staff and other musical notations
appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and great composers and musicians.