Music at Farnborough Grange

Intent

At Farnborough Grange, we aim for our children to develop an enjoyment of music by engaging in a variety of musical opportunities that are offered to them.

We aim to encourage development of musical exploration across a variety of elements of music, allowing children to build their knowledge, skills and musicianship over time. This includes children’s experiences of live music performance which we endeavour to provide as a vitally enriching part of their music experience. Through this, we encourage appreciation and enjoyment of different styles of music so that they can appraise performances.

We recognise the importance of performance as a way to develop children’s confidence and self-esteem and aim to provide as many opportunities for performance with live audiences as we can.

We encourage children to express themselves through playing instruments, composition, improvisation and performance and opportunities for this are built into the children’s learning enquiries.

Implementation

As a school we use Charanga Music to shape our Music curriculum. At the start of 2022 we moved over to using the new Model Music Curriculum. This new non-statutory curriculum splits music learning and appreciation into the following strands;

Elements of Music

Listening

Singing

Playing

Improvising and composing

Performing

Each unit has been carefully planned out from nursery through to year 2 and offers children the opportunity to develop in each area of the curriculum. Over time, children develop new musical skills and concepts, and also revisit established content. This enables them to re-enforce their musical understanding in order to improve the quality of their musicianship.

As much as possible, we provide the children with live music experiences to enable them to enjoy and appreciate live performances. Currently in Year 2, children take part in an African drumming workshop which gives them an insight into the African culture and the places this style of music into a global context. The whole school celebrates May Day with an external company providing performing arts enrichment including exploration of early folk instruments.

Singing is an integral part of school life and we come together for singing assemblies once a week. Children are encouraged to express themselves in this way and they learn a variety of songs from different genres and cultures.