Rationale:

Music at Burradon Community Primary School takes its aim from part of our core values:

Care and respect yourself, other people, our school and the wider world.

Stay safe, make sensible choices and do things that make you happy.

Intent:

At Burradon Community Primary School we believe that all children should enjoy and take part in musical opportunities throughout their childhood and time at our school through cross-curricular and discrete music teaching.  We believe that children should be encouraged to listen to and be curious about music from a range of cultures in order to gain a more rounded respect and understanding for their wider world.  

Our music curriculum allows:   

• Children to develop their performance skills through learning to play tuned and untuned instruments, singing a variety of songs and rehearsing and performing with others.
• Children to develop their composing skills through creating musical patterns and exploring and organising sounds and learning to record these in a variety of ways.
• Children to learn to analyse and compare sounds, explore ideas and make improvements to their work, building on their appraising skills.
• Children to learn to listen with increased concentration to internalise and recall sounds

Implementation:

Music is taught in all classes from Foundation Stage to Year 6.  The principal aim is to develop children’s knowledge, skills and understanding in music. In music we use a wide range of teaching styles to cater for a variety of learners at Burradon, such as using actions and dance, whole class work, small group work and individual work.  Staff are working closely together to ensure music progression is evident throughout the school and children build on what they already have been taught in previous years. 

We provide enrichment opportunities to our pupils so they can enjoy and experience new music genres and, where possible, live performances.  We have worked with Susie Jones, who works for the Local Authority, to provide some CPD opportunities for teaching singing and using the Sing Up and Charanga programmes we have bought into, to support our music teaching and the children's learning.  This was a very positive experience, every class in school had a 1:1 session with Susie and then after the 2 days, each class performed their songs to the school and we sang a song we had all learnt together.  This kick-started our year of singing off!  

"I liked our Mexican Wave song!" Y3 pupil

"It was very funny.  I enjoyed performing to the school afterwards!" Y5 pupil

The children take part in a singing/hymn assembly every week.  Mrs Baty, the subject leader, takes the assembly every Tuesday and the children enjoy a range of songs: modern to traditional, English and international, covering a range of genres from classical to rock 'n' roll and rap!    
"I like it when we do Christmas songs, they're really fun!" Y4 pupil

"I enjoy listening to the music at the start, it's sometimes really calm." Y2 pupil.

A school choir club provides opportunities for keen singers to be part of a fun, active group which often leads to a performance on a larger scale such as 'Angels of the North' concert at The Sage, Gateshead or a Vocal Celebration within the Local Authority.

"I love the songs we've been learning." Y5 pupil

"The music teacher makes up songs which are good to learn." Y5 pupil

"It was hard at first but it's getting a bit easier."  Y5 pupil