At Urmston Primary School we place children at the heart of all we do, our values leading us in the way we teach and the way we learn. We embed these values into the fabric of our school culture and enable our children to learn in an environment that is relevant, engaging, exciting and challenging and encourages them to reflect upon their learning. Music plays a key role in this and our vision is to really enthuse children about music and to help them both enjoy and understand how music is made and to think about what music means to them.
The policy below is written to outline the design and intent of our curriculum, how it will be implemented, and the impact that it will have on our pupils. It is to be read alongside our Music skills and knowledge progressions and topic overviews, which show how musical skills and knowledge are embedded into our 'Being More' curriculum.
We love Music at UPS and, as mentioned, it is built into our Being More Curriculum to have direct links to our wider curriculum topics. Music is taught as a distinct weekly lesson, as part of every class’ timetable, using bespoke units of work/sequence of lessons, knowledge and skills developed alongside our Music subject leads. These units of work link directly with the topics that children are learning in that same term for either Science, History or Geography. We use songs from a variety of sources, including the Music subscription websites, Charanga and SingUp, which our school subscribe to, in order to support the teaching and learning of Music.
In addition to the lessons taught by class teachers, three year groups also have access to whole class instrumental lessons provided by Trafford Music Service, for the duration of one term. The year groups currently offered this are Years 1, 2 and 5. For the last year we have also invested in specialist Music teachers to work with every KS1 and 2 class on a rotational basis, as CPD for class teachers and expert teaching and learning for our children.
Our Year 6s take part in a transition programme run by Trafford Music Service whose aim is that when every Year 6 pupil moves into Year 7 next September, they will have a song, a round and an instrumental activity in common with all other pupils. We know that there are increased levels of anxiety for many pupils and we want music to be something joyful that brings children from all over the borough together in their first few weeks of secondary school. This will offer Secondary Heads of Music an opportunity to assess their pupils as they start their secondary music journey and ultimately, to support our students in making even better progress.
Instrumental lessons
We would love as many of our children as possible to learn an instrument and we support this by facilitating children to have their instrumental lessons in school time. We currently offer guitar tuition in school with Front Row Music and you can find out more information or sign your child up here: I'm A Parent - Front Row Music (frontrow-music.com). Lessons currently take place in school time on Thursday and Friday afternoons and children are taught in small groups.
We also offer piano tuition with Trafford Music Service and furthermore, offer strings, brass and woodwind, depending on demand. You can find up to date information about what is currently being offered at our school, along with prices and the link for applying for instrumental tuition for your child by following this link: In school | Trafford Music Service. Piano lessons currently take place individually only, on Thursday afternoons.
If your child learns an instrument with Trafford Music Services, they have the option to progress within ensembles that take place at The Claremont Centre in Sale. You can gain more information about this here: Ensembles | Trafford Music Service
As mentioned above, in addition to individual and small group instrumental lessons that you can sign your child up for, we provide whole class instrumental lessons for one term per year for Years 1, 2 and 5. These instrumental lessons are delivered by specialist teachers from Trafford Music Service. The instruments taught vary from year to year depending on needs of the year group and teacher availability but have ranged from guitar or ukelele, to clarinet, to djembe drumming.
Instruments, albeit mainly non-tuned, form part of every unit of work in our SOW. Additionally, every KS2 year group completes a specific instrumental unit (glockenspiel or keyboard), delivered via Charanga by the class teacher.
Singing
Singing forms a big part of our Music curriculum and is utilised in most lessons. However, we also offer opportunities to develop singing skills for those children who enjoy it, including a school choir who rehearse weekly. We also have a weekly singing assembly for both KS1 and KS2, where singing skills are more specifically taught and progression is planned throughout the year and key stages. We also provide singing performance opportunities throughout the year in school performances, such as the Year 2 Harvest assembly, EYFS and KS1 Nativities and KS2 Carols at St.Clement’s church, as well as our whole school Carols on the Playground.
Performances
We want to facilitate all of our children having the opportunity both to see live Music performances and take part in their own music performances. We regularly arrange visiting professionals to perform assemblies at school, at least once annually, so that all children can see music performed live. We also arrange termly performances in assemblies, where every class/year group will perform something that they have been learning and rehearsing in class.
Also, our Year 4s will be taking part in the fantastic opportunity to visit and perform in a theatre. This is again in collaboration with Trafford Music Service in order to ensure that all primary school children have had this opportunity before leaving for secondary school.
For more information on our Music provision at UPS, or anything else you’d like us to offer, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
