Music

Our Vision: Music at Sandcross develops the whole child by providing an enjoyable, engaging creative journey, which all children have the freedom to explore.

Intent

At Sandcross we believe that music is an essential part of a broad and balanced education for all children.  Music develops the whole child by providing an enjoyable, engaging and creative experience that every child can access.  

We aim to create an environment where children enjoy exploring their own creativity and develop an understanding, knowledge and appreciation of music from different cultures and periods of history.  We aspire to foster a love of singing by making it part of every child’s school life through all the key stages.  We equip children with musical skills in performing, composing, actively listening, reviewing and evaluating music.  These are developed sequentially over modules of work. 

Children develop key social skills working in teams, learning to communicate, listening to each other, cooperating and taking responsibility for their own contributions to work.

We aim to offer high quality live music experiences and performance opportunities through assemblies, school productions and concerts.  We hope to inspire them to develop a life-long appreciation of music.

Implementation - So, how are we going to deliver this? 

All year groups receive weekly music lessons. All lessons provide opportunities to listen, appraise, perform and compose. There is a clear progression of skills across the year groups, using Charanga as our core music curriculum (and supplemented with units that link to topics). Most lessons are discreet, but where there is an obvious link with a topic, this should be utilised.

Phased singing assemblies regularly provide an opportunity for children to develop their singing skills. Alongside this, listening opportunities are provided, with questions to develop the children’s music vocabulary. In class, children have an opportunity from Year 1-6 to develop instrumental skills as they learn how to play the recorder, glockenspiel and ukulele in different year groups.  There are regular opportunities for our children to perform to audiences: class assemblies, Christmas concerts and nativities, Y2 play, Harvest, Easter, our annual Christmas tea party for OAPs, the drama club’s play, and the Y6 Leavers’ assembly.

We have live music performances from visiting instrumental teachers (and their pupils) where children can hear a wide variety of instruments performing, and even have a go. Our school orchestra is given curriculum time to rehearse, and we take part in the local Big Orchestra Day annually. ‘Slide’ – the jazz band from St Bede’s School – are regular visitors to the school, inspiring many of our children to take up instruments. 

Our junior choir has an excellent reputation in the local community. They perform regularly in local concerts, joining with other local schools (Schools Together; Surrey Primary Schools Music Festivals; Bandfest) and have even joined with local adult choirs to offer combined concerts. As well as this, the older children perform annually at the O2 in London with Young Voices alongside 7500 children.  

Instrumental lessons are offered through Surrey Arts. 

Impact - What difference is this curriculum making to our children? 

Our children enjoy performing and are developing their confidence as musicians, exploring the world of sounds, developing their skills and talents and creating musical ideas of their own.  They are learning to be brave and experiment with their ideas. They have a developing knowledge of musical language and are able to use this to help them understand and engage with the rich musical heritage of their own culture and of other cultures around the world. Music at Sandcross allows every child to shine.