Powell's C of E Primary School

Music - Subject lead Becky Jeremy & Sarah Williams

Music at Powells

Music lies at the heart of day-to-day life here at Powell’s School. With dedicated lessons that follow the national curriculum, a range of extra-curricular musical opportunities and regular collective worship, Powell’s facilitates the opportunity for all children to engage and inspire their musical curiosity. We encourage the children’s discovery of the richness of music, both historic and contemporary, and across a wide variety of musical cultures.

In KS1 we use the Charanga scheme and in KS2 our specialist music subject leaders have written their own scheme of work which clearly develops knowledge and skills across the keystage.

At Powell’s, we are incredibly lucky to have a dedicated Music and Drama Hall with an excellent range of classroom instruments and keyboards. We believe that music is for every child, and we work hard to continue developing new musical avenues and opportunities to ensure that all our children can access and enjoy this life-enhancing area of the arts.

Each week, children participate in whole school singing assemblies where they develop a range of voice and performance skills. Singing from an established repertoire, children will explore a broad and diverse range of songs and compositions that complement their wider creative curriculum.

Within the Early Years curriculum, music lessons explore the following areas:

Invent, adapt and recount narratives and stories with peers and their teacher.
Sing a range of well-known nursery rhymes and songs.
Perform songs, rhymes, poems and stories with others, and – when appropriate try to move in time with music

Across KS1 and KS2, each class has a weekly dedicated music lesson in which they explore the following areas:

KS 1

An introduction to the interrelated dimensions of music
Sing songs, chants and rhymes.
Play tuned and untuned classroom instruments.
Listen to and appraise a wide range of music from different genres, cultures and periods.
Start to explore a named composer.
Combine sounds to create music.
Explore pulse, rhythm and pitch.

KS 2

A deeper understanding of interrelated dimensions of music.
Sing, play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts.
Improvise and compose music for a range of purposes, including the use of music technology.
Appreciate and understand a wide variety of historical periods, styles, traditions through listening, singing, playing,
evaluating, analysing and composing.
A deeper exploration into named composers.
Continue to develop playing skills on both tuned and untuned classroom instruments.
Use and understand staff notation.
Develop an aural memory for rhythm and pitch.
All children learn the ukulele as part of the Wider Curriculum initiative.

Extra-Curricular opportunities

At Powell’s, we offer a wealth of opportunities for all our children to perform in school concerts, class assemblies, productions and services, with some of these taking place in the local Parish Church of St John Baptist.

Choir

We offer two choirs at Powell's School, a Lower School Choir (Years 1,2,3) and an Upper School Choir (Years 4,5,6). All children have the opportunity to become members of the school choirs. The choirs regularly perform, including performances to local care homes at Christmas.

Peripatetic Teachers

We are fortune enough to have a range of specialist teachers come into school and teach our children a range of instruments.