‘Without music, life would be a mistake.’

Friedrich Nietzsche

At Christ Church, we believe that music is for everyone and that every child deserves the opportunity to become real musicians who develop a lifelong love of music. As a school, we recognise that music can bring our school family together and connect everyone in our community around a series of fulfilling and rewarding experiences. We also recognise that music is multi-faceted and may include music in the curriculum, through the curriculum and beyond the curriculum. All children at Christ Church will experience playing an instrument and experimenting with the sounds they make and the joy of learning to play as both an individual and as a part of group. Our whole school family also sings together on an almost daily basis to help unite our community and celebrate and remember our school days. The overriding vision of our music curriculum is that all children have a high-quality music education which engages and inspires, increases self-confidence, creativity and imagination as well as providing vital opportunities for self-expression and personal fulfilment.

The National Curriculum for Music

We aim to ensure that, through listening to music, performing and composing, our children develop self-confidence, express themselves creatively and develop an understanding of the core elements of music. Music also plays a part in the cultural life of the school in the form of concerts, carol services, and music/drama productions.

The national curriculum for music aims to ensure that all pupils:

• perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians
• learn to sing and to use their voices, to create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, use technology appropriately and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence
• understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the inter-related dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.

Music Curriculum Overview

The Charanga Music Scheme is used as the basis for all of our class teaching throughout the school.  This is supplemented by the following-

-Whole class ensemble tuition in Year 1 and 4. 

-Rocksteady band lessons for groups and individuals.

-Individual Music lessons in guitar, violin, singing and brass. 

All musical learning in this scheme is built around the Interrelated Dimensions of Music: pulse, rhythm, pitch, tempo, dynamics, timbre, texture, structure and notation. These dimensions are at the centre of all our learning.

Mastery in our Music lessons

Charanga Musical School 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. We guide children through each strand of musical learning from Reception to Year 6. 

Musical teaching and learning is not neat or linear. The strands of musical learning are part of the learning spiral. Over time, children can both develop new musical skills and concepts, and re-visit established musical skills and concepts. Repeating a musical skill doesn’t necessarily mean their progress is slowing down or their development is moving backwards! It's just shifting within the spiral. Mastery means both a deeper understanding of musical skills and concepts and learning something new.