Intent

The intention of the music education at Oakwood Infant and Nursery School is first and foremost to help children develop a life-long love of music. We focus on developing the skills, knowledge and understanding that children need in order to become confident performers, composers and listeners. Our curriculum introduces children to music from all around the world and across generations, teaching children to respect and appreciate the music of all traditions and communities.

Children will develop musical skills of singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, improvising and composing music, and listening and responding to music. They will develop an understanding of the history and cultural context of the music that they listen to and learn how music can be written down. Through music, our curriculum helps children develop transferable skills such as team-working, leadership, creative thinking, problem solving, decision making and presentation and performance skills. These skills are vital to children’s development as learners and have a wider application in their general lives outside and beyond school.

The music curriculum at Oakwood Infant and Nursery school enables children to meet the end of key stage attainment targets.

Implementation 

At Oakwood Infant and Nursery School we use the Kapow! Music scheme of work. Kapow’s primary music scheme takes a holistic approach to music, in which the individual strands are woven together to create engaging and enriching learning experiences:

• Performing
• Listening
• Composing
• The history of music
• The inter-related dimensions of music

Each five lesson unit combines these strands within a cross-curricular topic designed to capture pupils’ imagination and encourage them to explore music enthusiastically. Over the course of the scheme, children will be taught how to sing fluently and expressively, and play tunes and untuned instruments accurately and with control. They will learn to be recognise and name the interrelated dimensions of music – pitch, duration, tempo, timbre, structure, texture and dynamics – and use these expressively in their own improvisations and compositions.

The instrumental scheme lessons complement the Kapow Primary scheme of work and allow lower key stage pupils, like those at Oakwood Infant and Nursery, to develop their expertise in using a tuned instrument for a minimum of one term as recommended in the model music curriculum.

The Kapow Primary scheme follows the spiral curriculum model where previous skills and knowledge are returned to and built upon. Children progress in terms of tackling more complex tasks and doing more simple tasks better, as well as developing understanding and knowledge of the history of music, staff and other musical notations, as well as the interrelated dimensions of music and more.

In each lesson, pupils will actively participate in musical activities drawn from a range of styles and traditions, developing their musical skills and their undertaking of how music works. Lessons incorporate a range of teaching strategies from independent tasks, paired and group work as well as improvisation and teacher led performances. Lessons are ‘hands on’ and incorporate movement and dance elements, as well as making cross curricular links with other areas of learning.

Music is taught through half hour lessons every week from Reception - Year 2. In EYFS musical opportunities are readily available through high quality continuous provision and in KS1 high quality enhanced provision is provided by the teacher to support and embed musical learning.