Music
Intent
“Music is the universal language of mankind” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (American poet)
At St Joseph's, every child and adult is a musician.
We provide a high quality, bespoke curriculum across the whole school (Nursery – Year 6) to engage and inspire a lifelong love and appreciation of music as a musician. Every child has opportunities throughout their school life to discover their potential in a rich and varied musical life encompassing singing, playing, composing, listening to and appraising a diverse range of styles of music, instruments, and composers from a wide range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions.
We have designed our curriculum to increase the children’s confidence, creativity and sense of achievement and to gain a varied and engaging experience and understanding of music that will remain with them for life.
Implementation
All children, from Nursery to Year 6, have weekly Music lessons with our Music Specialist teacher as well as Hymn Practices together in their Key Stages. Long term plans ensure progression of knowledge and skills across all strands of the Music curriculum both throughout the year and across the school.
Singing is central to our Music curriculum and is woven throughout all units of work. The EYFS and Key Stage 1 curriculum is heavily influenced by the Kodaly method of learning musicianship through singing which builds a very solid base in the key skills of pulse, rhythm, pitch and focused listening. In Key Stage 2 children also learn through whole class tuned instrumental work.
Our Music curriculum is not a rigid document, it hangs on the progression of skills and retains key features such as the Kodaly method and whole class instrumental teaching, whilst allowing room for response to opportunities that arise, class's interests and prior experiences etc.
Our progression of skills document remains concrete and has been devised based on a number of national documents: the EYFS documents Development Matters, Musical Development Matters In The Early Years, Early Learning Goals, Kodaly statements (Jolly Music), and the National Curriculum for Music. Our skills document was reviewed in response to the Model Music Curriculum to ensure at least an equal level of challenge was required.
We have a strong culture of performance, both formal and informal, at St Joseph’s. Our children love to perform and to listen to performances by their peers. We have many concerts each year, both in school and at external venues.
All children from EYFS to Year 6 perform at our annual Summer Concert, all EYFS and Key Stage 1 children perform in our annual nativities. All children take part in additional performances either with extra-curricular ensembles or as part of class performances both in and outside of school. Performances as a result of curriculum Music lessons range from performing to the rest of the school to taking part in a large scale performance for members of the public at prestigious venues such as the English National Opera, Royal Albert Hall, St John Smith Square and Westminster Cathedral.
We offer instrumental lessons and currently have over 80 children engaged in 1:1 instrumental lessons from Years 1-6. Children who have instrumental lessons perform regularly in school, at least twice a year in chamber concerts for parents and also in relaxed concerts for our Nursery and also for children from Chelsea Open Air Nursery. Funding support is available for Pupil Premium students.
The Music curriculum is enhanced as appropriate by visits from external organisations (recently including English National Opera, Albert’s Band, The Bach Choir, ABRSM Classical 100 team, Tri-Borough Music Hub) and trips out of school for concerts at venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, Royal College of Music, English National Opera, Marylebone Music Festival, and Cadogan Hall. We work closely with the Tri-Borough Music Hub and make extensive use of their opportunities for our children including annual performances such as the Christmas Festival, Infant Voices, and instrumental playing days as well as one off opportunities such as being the launch school for the relaunch of the ABRSM's Classical 100 resource.
In Spring 2023, twenty of our Year 5 and 6 children performed in the run of 9 performances of Bizet’s Carmen at English National Opera. They were met with great critical acclaim. ENO have continued their relationship with us and have expressed a wish to work with us further when appropriate for their programming. The children experienced the professional music world and the myriad of roles behind the scenes at an Opera company.
After the run finished, we hosted an abridged performance by ENO and our 20 Year 5s and 6s of Carmen for the whole school and local community to watch for free and celebrate the achievements of our children.
In June 2023 Year 4 performed at the Royal Albert Hall with the Tri-Borough Music Hub in 2023 in a large scale performance of over 1000 children entitled Music Makes Me, focusing on a day in the life of a neuro-divergent teenager. Following on from this a focus group of students are taking part in a workshop with a composer from the Royal College of Music.
Students visit the Royal College of Music, Marylebone Music Festival and English National Opera as audience members. These trips are chosen to open the world of Music as a degree and career choice to children and to expose them to music making at the highest level. Visiting the London Coliseum to watch an opera is an experience that will remain with the children for life and ensure they feel welcome in our country’s most prestigious venues.
These opportunities outside of the classroom feed back into the classroom and influence curriculum activities and expectations.
We feel very strongly that all children should have the opportunity to progress their interests and potential regardless of financial barriers and the Music Specialist is able to signpost opportunities for those children for whom music is a particular potential career interest.
At St Joseph’s we have a student Arts forum consisting of children in Key Stage 2 to represent their peer's views and to promote the Arts in our school. The children meet regularly to feed back pupil voice and to plan and review projects.
In response to the National Plan for Music Education, our annual Music action plan is being enlargened in to a Music Development Plan which will be in place by 2023/24 as per the National Plan's timeline. There are already firm links in place with The Cardinal Vaughan School in our new Multi-Academy Trust, and joint performances have taken place at Westminster Cathedral and our local church, St Mary's.
Impact
Children are informally assessed continually so that teaching can be adapted in both the immediate and longer term to meet children’s needs both for additional support and for additional challenge. In Key Stage 2 in particular, children are encouraged to monitor their progress against a set of skills throughout a project so they can identify their next step.
Where appropriate, children may be shown a video or audio recording of a previous year group in order to motivate and inspire. Children are filmed or audio recorded and these recordings are used to engage in both peer and self assessment. These recordings demonstrate progression of skills over time across all areas of the Music curriculum.
The continuity of being taught by the Music Specialist from Nursery to Year 6 means that the children’s previous experiences, strengths and weaknesses are well known and that planning takes into account a child’s experiences across a number of years. Where appropriate, this will also include supporting preparation for Music aptitude tests for secondary school applications and for aural tests in instrumental exams.
The impact of the Music Specialist’s teaching can also be seen by the very high take-up of extra-curricular ensembles and instrumental lessons. We have a Year 3&4 choir and a Year 5&6 choir which both rehearse during the school day and almost all children in these classes attend. Our orchestra includes children who have instrumental lessons outside of school as well as inside school.
There are over 80 children engaged in extra-curricular instrumental lessons (piano, violin, guitar, drum kit, flute, clarinet, mini bassoon and saxophone) and they are encouraged to use their instruments in curriculum Music lessons as appropriate.
We signpost families to external opportunities with a variety of providers and have positive feedback from families who have engaged with these. One particular success is that as a result of this signposting we have nine children receiving long term free instrumental lessons at the Royal College of Music and have had students work 1:1 with the English National Opera taking part in auditions and appearing in their publicity film.
We pride ourselves on having a lasting impact on children’s musical lives and establishing skills and an appreciation of music for life. Past students have performed in the touring version of School of Rock, joined the choir of St Paul’s Cathedral, and a current student has successfully auditioned for the Royal Opera House junior department and now appears in their productions.