Our Music and The Arts Curriculum Offer

INTENT STATEMENT

The Green Way Academy is proud to serve the community of North Hull and give our pupils the very best learning opportunities and experiences regardless  of their circumstances. We are committed to delivering an exciting, inspirational, and motivating curriculum which enables pupils to become independent learners preparing them for their next steps in life. Our mission is pure and simple: we want all of our pupils to experience success and have high aspirations so that they can go on to lead a remarkable life. This is the golden thread that binds us all together – the reason that despite our very different paths to The Green Way Academy, we are all part of one family.


Our 3 Key Curriculum Drivers:

1.    Remarkable Aspirations – we  provide exceptional experiences which show our pupils  the wide range of possibilities available for their future.

2.    Remarkable Environment – we provide a safe haven for all our pupils to flourish and lead a remarkable life

3.    Remarkable  Learners - we offer a wide range of experiences to allow our pupils  to become independent and resourceful learners and reach their full potential

 Aspirations, Environment and Learners!

 

Music and the Arts PROPER.pdf

1. INTRODUCTION

Music is a part of our lives: it is the International Language of the World that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. Music reflects our time and place, our heritage, the community we live in, and our multicultural world. For the children we teach, music is crucial for their emotional well-being and provides them with an alternative opportunity to express them-selves in a way that no other subject does. In addition, music offers children the  opportunity to develop many life skills such as listening and concentration, physical coordination, patterns and number work, teamwork and social skills. We believe that a wide variety of musical opportunities within our curriculum is the entitlement of all children, regardless of ethnic origin, gender, class, aptitude or disability. Our aims in teaching music include the following:

General

· To engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians

· Developing the child’s judgement of different types of music: review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions

· To greatly support the learning in other national curriculum subjects due to the skills learnt in music (see below)

· To aid memory through recall of lyrics from Foundation Stage age through to adulthood and perform these using instruments and/or their voices

· Developing our children’s ability to understand and explore how music is created and communicated.

Attitudes

· Encouraging the development of positive attitudes to music

· Understand that music offers an emotional release due to its emotive  nature

· Encouraging open-mindedness and acceptance that everyone’s music taste is different and harbour that sensitivity towards others

· Building our children’s self-confidence to enable them to perform in front of others

· Developing our children’s social skills to work cooperatively with others

· Providing our children with an enjoyable experience of music, so that they will develop a deep emotional link to the subject and realise this could be a possible career path.

2. Skills

· Giving our children an opportunity to develop key listening skills through the listening and appraising process

· Helping our children’s ability to concentrate

· Developing the skills of creativity, intuitions, aesthetic    sensitivity and perseverance.

· Developing the use of musical language: terminology, notation, composition and improvisation

· Developing the use of their vocal ability: in tune, range of notes/keys, melodic intonation

· Giving our children the opportunity to learn an instrument or a range of instruments.

3. OUR IMPLEMENTATION

Music is a National Curriculum subject and has 3 strands of musical learning. These are:

Listening and Appraising

Musical Activities

Performing

Our role is to teach music through the aforementioned strands. 

We aim to:

· Teach music in ways that are imaginative, purposeful, well managed and enjoyable.

· Give clear and accurate teacher explanations and offering skilful reflection.

· Play and Perform in solo and ensemble contexts

· Improvise and compose using musical notations

· Experience a range of music from different traditions

· Develop an understanding of the history of music

 

4. THE STRUCTURE OF MUSIC

Music teaching in the school is about excellence and enjoyment. We endeavour to encourage children to ‘be unusually brave’ and help them to ‘discover what is possible’.  We adapt and extend the curriculum to make it relevant and meaningful for our pupils and the environment within which they live. 

Children in the Early Years Foundation Stage are taught the  elements of music through the foundation stage document :- The Early- Learning Curriculum: Expressive Arts and Design.

The school follows the National Curriculum for Music (in England). The units of the scheme of work are taught through the online music programme we follow: Charanga.  This ensures progression of skills and knowledge between year groups. Teachers are expected to adapt and modify the model plans to suit their children’s interests, current events, their own teaching style, the use of any support staff and the resources available. We must ensure that any modification does not overlook any areas of the Charanga scheme and that it (in fact) enhances it. The scheme follows a year plan for each year group. The Music Co-ordinator will liaise with colleagues to ensure that all staff are aware of the topics being taught. All units within each route must be taught however, there is freedom and flexibility to teach the units in any order. This allows links to the Creative Curriculum Topic. 

 

5. OUR APPROACH TO MUSIC

The essential strands describing how music is taught in our school are described below. We follow and implement the online Charanga teaching scheme:

· This provides week-by-week lesson support for each year group in the school

· It provides lesson plans, assessment, clear progression and engaging and exciting whiteboard resources to support every lesson

· It provides an integrated, practical, exploratory and child-led approach to musical learning

· It has interrelated dimensions of music that weave through the units to encourage the development of musical skills as the learning progresses through listening and appraising, differing musical activities (including creating and exploring) and performing

· Each lesson begins with an interactive whiteboard warm up game (of which there are several elements)

· This is followed by the broken down stages to learning a song

· In ALL year groups there is an opportunity to learn to play the either tuned or un-tuned instruments focusing on beats and reading musical notation

· In some year groups improvisation and composition are introduced. This is then  followed by the performing element.

 

6. CURRICULUM OPPORTUNITIES IN MUSIC

 

Music is taught from the scheme at least once a week. Across the school week there are other opportunities to be involved in music through:

· Instrumental lessons for those that take them. These are available free to all pupils from Year 3 upwards

· A school choir for Year 3 upwards (involved in Singing Days at the City Hall, Festival of Carols at the City Hall, Local Shopping Centre Christmas Carolling, Ada Holmes (local residential home) Christmas Carolling)

· Singing at the end of each assembly x3 weekly

· Any other Creative Curriculum opportunities as they arise.

On a broader scale across the school there are also these musical opportunities for the children to be involved in:

· Termly – a whole school Charanga concert, plus a choir and orchestra concert for parents (and pupils)

· Annually - FS and KS1 Christmas Nativity, along with Phase 2 and Phase 3 carol concerts to parents (and pupils)

· Annually - Year 6 end of term concert and performance

· Annually - Greenway’s Got Talent Talent Show (to parents and pupils)

· Termly-End of term ‘karaoke's’ and celebrations

· Biannually – NAPA musical theatre show (to parents of the year group involved)

 

7. EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES IN MUSIC

Music is taught within the guidelines of the school’s equal-opportunities policy.

· We ensure that all our children have the opportunity to gain musical knowledge and understanding regardless of gender, race, class, physical or intellectual ability

· Our expectations do not limit pupil achievement and assessment does not involve cultural, social, linguistic or gender bias

· We aim to teach music in a broad global and historical context, using the widest possible perspective and including the contributions of people of many different backgrounds

· We draw examples from other cultures, recognising that music can be made from the simplest of equipment

· We value music as a vehicle for the development of listening, concentration and language skills, and we encourage our children to talk constructively but empathetically about their musical experiences

· We recognise the particular importance of first-hand experience for motivating children with learning difficulties.

· We recognise that music may strongly engage our gifted and talented children, and we aim to challenge and extend them and that the less able children may have a natural ability that shouldn’t be hindered by their Literacy skills. 

· We exploit music’s natural contribution to developing children’s creativity; we develop this by encouraging children to be confident participants in all areas of music.

 

8. ASSESSMENT AND RECORDING OF MUSIC

We use assessment to inform and develop our teaching. Children are involved in the process of self-improvement, recognising their achievements and acknowledging where they could improve. 

We work closely with the peripatetic teachers to ensure children taking these lessons have the opportunity to enter graded examinations and receive feedback from this resulting in assessment of their learning and how to move forward to the next grade. This is a free offer for all pupils.

Because the scheme of work teaches a song each half term it allows the children time and repetition in order to have either achieved the learning objective or are working towards the learning objective.

Each term, we assess the children’s ability against learning objectives from the National Curriculum via the Charanga scheme through a whole school concert where every year group performs their Charanga song to the rest of the school.

The school music coordinator monitors progress through the school via the whole school music concert and through classroom drop-ins on a termly basis. Children who are not succeeding, and children who demonstrate high ability in music, are identified and supported. Reports to parents are written once a year where they are given a grade for effort, achievement and progress in line with Age Related Expectation for the child. 

 

9. Musical Progression

The Green Way and NAPA-Proud partners in fostering talent across school and given pupils an enriched, wider understanding of the arts.


The Northern Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA) is the biggest Hull based Performing Arts school in the region who provide outreach to schools in the city. We buy into this service as it provides our children a much needed opportunity to be creative and participate in parts of the curriculum that don’t focus on academia. It also provides an opportunity that most children will never be able to access outside of school. During the year we have a specialist musical theatre teacher who comes and teaches our Year 1 , Year 3  and Year 6 across the year.

In 2019 the year 1 and year 3 took part in the ‘Outreach Extravaganza’ concert at the Hull City Hall where they performed alongside 14 other primary schools in the city in drama, dance and musical theatre performances. The aim of this was to help to raise student’s aspirations  and give them the opportunity to have a cultural and collaborative platform. 

Along with NAPA, the school tries to foster and harness talent at all times. Talented pupils can take up sponsored places to pursue acting, musical theatre and dance outside of school to develop talents even further. These sponsored places are provided at a reduced rate for our families and the difference in cost is paid for by the school.

Hull Music Service

The Green Way Academy and The Hull Music    Service -Proud partners working together to   foster talent and create wider opportunities as a free offer.

Hull Music Service currently offers music support to all the primary, secondary and special schools in Hull and also the sixth form colleges. This is delivered in the form of instrumental tuition, curriculum support, live music concerts, workshops or specific projects.

At the Green Way Academy our  wider offer is one of the largest in the city. Within this agreement we provide instrumental teaching through the peripatetic teachers. They come into school weekly and teach Woodwind, Brass, Strings and Steel Pans. It also provides our Charanga licence for our music scheme that is followed across the school.

This is an invaluable resource for our children as it is completely free to them and provides them with an opportunity to learn an instrument that they might not have outside of school. This also leads to some of them going on and taking exams in the instrument they are learning.