Every child deserves the opportunity to engage with music of all styles and from all cultures, in order to develop their own musical journey. At Pocklington Church of England VC Infant School we make music an enjoyable learning experience. We encourage all children to participate in a variety of new and challenging musical experiences through which we aim to build up their love of music, self-confidence and sense of achievement.
Our teaching focuses on developing the children’s ability to:
- sing in tune with other people
- play tuned and untuned musical instruments with increasing control, fluency and expression
- listen critically to a wide range of music from different periods, genres, styles and traditions.
Our Music scheme of work enables pupils to meet the end of phase attainment targets in the EYFS Framework and the National Curriculum. We follow the Charanga Creative Music Scheme. Charanga is designed to cover the National Curriculum for Music fully, ensuring teachers meet its statutory requirements while offering creative freedom.
EYFS
The learning incorporates both teacher-led and child-led learning activities involving listening and responding to music, musical games, singing, playing instruments, improvising, composing and performing. Careful sequencing helps children to build their learning over time. (Development Matters page 9).
The Nursery and Reception units enable children to understand musical concepts through a repetition-based approach to learning. Learning about the same musical concept through different musical activities enables a more secure, deeper learning and mastery of musical skills. Musical teaching and learning are not neat or linear. The strands of musical learning, presented within the lesson plans and the on-screen resources, are part of the learning spiral. Over time, children can both develop new musical skills and concepts and consolidate and deepen learning. Repeating a musical skill doesn’t necessarily mean their progress is slowing down or their development is moving backwards! It’s just shifting within the spiral. Mastery means both a deeper understanding of musical skills and concepts and learning something new.
Year 1 & 2
Lesson sequences support the development of listening skills, vocal and instrumental technique, improvisation, and composition, enabling clear tracking of children’s progress over time. Guidance is provided for less confident learners and more advanced pupils, allowing teachers to tailor activities to individual needs and maintain engagement. Lessons incorporate a variety of musical experiences and opportunities, including singing, movement, story-based performance, and ensemble work, while supporting cross-curricular learning, motivating children, and fostering their love of music.
Performances
Our Nursery Christmas Concert and Reception Nativity provide the children with the exciting opportunity to learn new songs and dances to perform for their families.. These performances are a highlight of our year and the children have so much fun rehearsing and putting on a show!
The children in Year 1 perform an Easter musical. They enjoy learning more complex and challenging songs whilst performing in character. The children across the school love to watch their peers perform.
As leavers, the Year 2 children take pride in rehearsing and performing their musical each summer. The musicals are a chance for the children to celebrate their learning and increase their confidence before moving to Junior School.
Singing
Singing is an important part of our daily collective worship. Songs are chosen to reflect the church and /or school year, we use a range of traditional hymns and contemporary songs written for children. Every week the senior teachers and our experienced volunteer pianist lead a singing assembly. Children learn and sing new songs together as well as develop new singing techniques.
Throughout the year we have many different occasions and events that incorporate music such as Christmas Church service, Nativity plays, Harvest Festival, Easter service in church, Thank you assemblies, and class assemblies. We often invite external agencies into the school to share a range of different music with the children. We also offer music clubs at lunchtime and an after-school club run by the East Riding Music Service.