Kapow Primary music scheme is used throughout The Stoke Poges School to support children to feel that they are musical and to develop a life-long love of music.  We focus on developing the skills, knowledge and understanding that children need in order to become confident performers, composers and listeners.  Our curriculum introduces our children to music from all around the world and across generations, developing respect and appreciation for music of all traditions and communities.

Children will develop the musical skills of singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, improvising and composing music, and listening and responding to music.  They will develop an understanding of the history and cultural context of the music that they listen to and learn how music can be written down.  Through music, our curriculum helps our children develop transferable skills such as team-working, leadership, creative thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, and presentation and performance skills.  These skills are vital to children’s development as learners and have a wider application in their general lives outside and beyond school.

What are we aiming for?

Our Music curriculum aims to create children who will:

• Be confident performers, composers and listeners and will be able to express themselves musically at and beyond school.
• Show an appreciation and respect for a wider range of musical styles from around the world and will understand how music is influenced by the wider cultural, social and historical contexts in which it is developed.
• Understand the various ways in which music can be written down to support performing and composing activities.
• Demonstrate and articulate an enthusiasm for music and be able to identify their own personal musical preferences.
• Meet the end of key stage expectations outlined in the National curriculum for Music.

How do we achieve this?

Our music scheme takes a holistic approach to music, in which the individual strands below are woven together to create engaging and enriching learning experiences.

• Listening and evaluating
• Creating sound
• Notation
• Improvising and composing
• Performing

Each five-lesson unit combines these strands within a cross-curricular topic designed to capture pupils’ imagination and encourage them to explore music enthusiastically.  Over the course of the scheme, our children will be taught how to sing fluently and expressively and play tuned and untuned instruments accurately and with control.  They will learn to recognise, demonstrate and name the interrelated dimensions of music – pitch, duration, tempo, timbre, structure, texture and dynamics – and use these expressively in their own improvisations and compositions.

The scheme follows the spiral curriculum model where previous skills and knowledge are returned to and built upon.  The children progress in terms of tackling more complex tasks and doing simple tasks better, as well as developing understanding and knowledge of the history of music, staff, and other musical notations, and the interrelated dimensions of music.

Music lessons are taught by specialist teachers. All children in Year 4 learn to play the ukulele and Year 5 children learn to play the pBone.

From Year 3 onwards, children are given the opportunity to learn a musical instrument. Peripatetic teachers from The Bucks Music Trust visit our school each week to give lessons in Violin, Woodwind, Brass and Classical Guitar.

We have a well attended choir which children can join from Year 3 and an orchestra, which children are invited to join from Year 4.

Assessment and monitoring

In music, assessment is constantly monitored through both formative and summative assessment opportunities.  Teachers assess against the learning objectives and at the end of each unit there is often a performance element where teachers can make a summative assessment of learning.  Knowledge organisers support pupils by providing a highly visual record of the key learning from the unit, encouraging recall of practical skills, key knowledge and vocabulary.