Appreciating and expressing emotion through sound.

At Haddon, music is an authentic and memorable subject. It promotes an excellence and enjoyment that results in a lifelong love and understanding of how music impacts our lives and the world that we live in, as well as our own health and wellbeing. Singing is the heart of our school: it’s woven into school life, celebrations and wider community opportunities. There is a clear progression within singing across the primary age range and children experience a breadth of styles. We understand that aspects of good singing develop slowly over time, and work on various principles, including the importance of posture and breathing.

Listening and appreciating skills are developed through active listening and being exposed to music from early Renaissance to modern day. Composing offers students to make unique and valuable contributions to musical culture. This is done through graphic scores, music notation, and the use of technology.

Further to this, our WEAVE curriculum principles underpin the foundations of our music curriculum with the children experiencing the wider world through the planned content, authentic experiences and connections by singing collaboratively with other schools and community singing, raising money for charity. Career aspirations are discussed with children, enabling them to see the value of the subject. The music curriculum is vocabulary-rich, with topic-specific words supporting them to speak and act like musicians. The children are exposed to different music periods, as well as composers/musicians, throughout their journey at Haddon.

Aims of the Music Curriculum:

Our music curriculum aims for pupils to:

• perform, listen to, and evaluate music from various historical periods, genres, styles, and traditions, including works of great composers.
• learn to sing, use voices, create, and compose music, with opportunities to learn instruments, use technology, and progress in musical skills.
• understand and explore how music is created, produced, and communicated through the interrelated dimensions of music.

Music Key Knowledge Progression Document 

Music is taught using Sing Up; this ensures that there is a full coverage of the National Curriculum, with progressive content being taught (some more ambitious than the National Curriculum) from Nursery to Year 6. This has been planned out using the Flying High Partnership’s Key Knowledge Progression Documentation to formulate sequences of learning.