Music

At Arunside Primary School, we aim for all children to foster a real enjoyment of music through high-quality music teaching: supporting and encouraging all children to achieve their full potential. Within our wonderful and well-stocked music room, children will develop their musical skills and understanding through listening and appraising, singing, playing, composing and performing. Our curriculum enables children to discover music from a diverse range of cultures, genres, composers and time periods. At Arunside, our children have the opportunity to apply their music learning through a range of extra-curricular music experiences involving our local community, while having access to whole class instrumental tuition through West Sussex Music. Ultimately, we aim to create an environment where children feel confident to express themselves through music and instill within them a lifelong love and appreciation of music.

At our school, we follow the Charanga music scheme to develop the children’s musical skills and knowledge, year on year. Through this, children are taught to: actively listen and discuss music using musical vocabulary from a range of genres and cultures; play a range of tuned and untuned instruments including using their voices; compose, practice and perform their own pieces, either individually or as part of a team. In addition, for a term, Year 3 children are taught African djembe drumming and Year 4 ukulele, by a specialist music teacher who delivers weekly lessons to develop the children’s skills and technique. Music lessons are taught by our class teachers, with support and CPD provided by our highly-skilled music leaders.

In addition to whole-class music teaching, there are lots of opportunities for the children’s musical learning to be applied through exciting events including local music festivals, singing assemblies, nativities and class assemblies. Peripatetic music tuition is available to Arunside pupils through West Sussex Music and Rocksteady. Pupils are encouraged to participate in school-based extra-curricular musical clubs which include our annual Young Voices choir, which provides the opportunity to perform at Wembley Arena!

When children leave Arunside Primary School, they will have developed an enthusiasm for music. They will have experienced a wide range of musical genres, styles and instruments and will be able to use musical vocabulary. We hope they will enjoy the music process as they listen and discuss different musical pieces, manipulate different instruments, compose pieces independently and together, and perform with confidence and enjoyment. By the time they reach year six, children will have developed a progression of skills and knowledge which builds upon previous learning. The impact of their musical education will be evidenced by: video and photographic evidence of the rehearsal and performance stages; pupil voice about their learning; monitoring against the curriculum and skills progression framework.