In This Section

“Music education opens doors that help children pass from school into the world around them – a world of work, culture, intellectual activity, and human involvement. The future of our nation depends on providing our children with a complete education that includes music.” 

President Gerald Ford  

Intent 

At Stansfield Hall we aim to inspire our children to have a love of music which they will have for the rest of their lives. We aim to help children feel that they are musical and achieve this by using the scheme of work from Charanga. We develop the skills, knowledge and understanding that children need to become confident performers, composers and listeners. Our children have opportunities to listen to music from all around the world and across many generations. As a result, our children learn to respect and appreciate the music of all traditions and communities. 

We encourage children to develop music skills of singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, improvising and composing music, alongside listening and responding to music. They also develop an understanding of the history and cultural context of the music that they listen to and learn how it can be written down. All children will have the opportunity to play tuned and untuned instruments. Overall, our music curriculum intends to engage and inspire all our children to increase in confidence, creativity and a sense of achievement. 

Implementation 

The Charanga scheme puts songs at the heart of each unit of work which provide enriching learning experiences. The strands are as follows: 

1. Listening and Appraising
2. Musical Activities
3. Warm-up Games
4. Optional Flexible Games
5. Singing
6. Playing Instruments
7. Improvisation
8. Composition
9. Performing

Within each unit, children are taught how to sing fluently and expressively and play tuned and untuned instruments accurately and with increasing control. They will learn to recognise pitch, duration, tempo, timbre, structure, textures and dynamics through each unit in a progressive way This knowledge can then be applied to their own improvisations and compositions. 

National curriculum attainment targets are met, and skills are progressively taught within each year group. Charanga follows an interrelated spiral model where previous skills and knowledge are returned to and built upon which is ideal for our mixed year groups.  

Impact 

We use the Charanga assessment tool to assess whether our children are on track and are making progress.  

The impact of the scheme is that our children will: 

• Be confident as performers, composers and listeners. 
• Show an appreciation and respect for a wide range of musical styles from around the world and will understand music in wider cultural, social and historical contexts. 
• Understand the ways in which music can be written down to support performance and composing activities. 
• Be enthusiastic about music and be able to identify their own personal musical preferences and articulate this. 
• Meet the end of key stage expectations as outlined in the National and EYFS curriculum.

Explorers — EYFS & Year 1

Discoverers — Years 2 & 3

Pioneers — Years 4 & 5

Pioneers — Year 6