Key Stage 3 - Music

Music is all around us. It is the soundtrack to our lives. Music connects us through people and places in our ever-changing world. It is creative, collaborative, celebratory and challenging. In our schools, music can bring communities together through the shared endeavour of whole-school singing, ensemble playing, experimenting with the creative process and, through the love of listening to friends and fellow pupils, performing. The sheer joy of music making can feed the soul of a school community, enriching each student while strengthening the shared bonds of support and trust which make a great school.

Music at Key Stage 3 continues the journey towards building a universal foundation of musical understanding. It is expected that pupils will arrive at Key Stage 3 having had experience of performing, composing and listening and will be able to read a simple melody.

Music Technology is likely to play an increasingly important role in the delivery of the Key Stage 3 curriculum, particularly given its importance in opening routes to further study. The form that this technology will take may vary hugely from school to school, including differing hardware and software solutions now that cloud-based Digital Audio Workstations can be accessed widely.

• By the end of Key Stage 3 (Year 9), pupils will have:
  gained an aural knowledge of some of the great musical output of human civilisation
  engaged with creative processes through improvisation and composition

• built an understanding of how musical elements work and discussed how these interact with subjective and objective models of musical meaning
  developed knowledge of a wider range of notes and improved their fluency in music notation. Notation can grant access to a lifelong passion for music making if this skill is nurtured.