Music

Curious, Loving, Independent, Creative and Knowledgeable

Intent

Our curriculum vision is that our children are curious, loving, independent, creative and knowledgeable (CLICK) citizens of the future.

At St Antony’s, we are musicians. We want our children to love music and to aspire to be creative members of the world as composers, performers or music producers. The music curriculum has been carefully crafted so that our children develop their musical capital.

We have designed the music curriculum beginning with the end in mind. The subject content as outlined in the national curriculum supports the needs of our children and allows them to retain knowledge in their long-term memory.

St Antony’s is situated in a leafy suburb of the London Borough of Redbridge and the majority of children come from professional homes with access to a rich cultural capital. What our children need, is a more global viewpoint and an understanding of the diverse world in which they live.

As a Catholic school, our faith is at the heart of everything that we do and the principles of catholic social teaching are therefore drivers for our curriculum. It is also inspired by Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato si’, which calls us to “Listen to the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor who suffer most” and by the UN Global Goals, in particular, Sustainable Cities and Communities (11), Climate Action (13) Life Below Water (14) and Life on Land (15).

Implementation

Rationale for progression within Music

In Saint Antony’s we want our children the foster a love of music by exposing them to a wide range of music across the ages.  This will be achieved through assemblies, music played in class, productions and through our curriculum by using the Charanga scheme.

Key Stage One will being with playing single notes on the glockenspiel, focusing on pulse, rhythm, pitch, dynamics and tempo.

Lower Key Stage Two will build on this knowledge and take part in a Glockenspiel course, teaching them musical notation. By listening to a wide range of music throughout history, they will focus on the musical elements of pulse, rhythm, pitch, dynamics, tempo and texture.

Using the knowledge they have gained in previous years, Upper Key Stage Two will begin a course on the Ukulele, which is continued in our Feeder Secondary School in Year 7.  The elements of pulse, rhythm, pitch, dynamics, tempo, texture and timbre will be focused on in a range of music throughout history.