Intent, Implementation and Impact

Progression of Skills

 

 

At St. Nicholas’ School we believe that every child is entitled to a good music education which is why we have specialist music teachers to teach both class music lessons and singing assemblies. Every child has the opportunity to enjoy music through listening, singing and playing instruments. Singing assemblies are split into Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 on separate days, with Reception children joining the KS1 singing assemblies in the summer term. These assemblies introduce children to new and familiar pieces of music both through listening and singing a variety of music.

 

Class Music Lessons

Class music lessons are taught either by the class teacher or by a specialist music teacher once a week. These lessons include a listening activity, singing, improvising and composing using tuned and untuned percussion instruments, musical notation, and musical games that introduce and reinforce the children’s knowledge of the interrelated dimensions of music: beat/pulse, rhythm, pitch, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture and structure. Children have the opportunity to listen to and discuss their opinions about a wide range of music, from a variety of genres such as classical, jazz, baroque, electronic, pop, blues, ragtime, rock, romantic, to name a few! Although we mainly use Charanga as our music scheme, lessons are often adapted to the children and the choice of listening material is taken from the new Model Music Curriculum.

 

Performances

Each year group gets to perform to the school. Currently, Foundation Stage produce both something for Christmas and a short play in the summer term too; Christmas performances vary, but usually Key Stage one perform a musical play with a Christmas theme and sometimes Year five and six treat us to carols and readings around the Christmas tree. Towards the end of the spring term, Year three and four entertain us with a play, which is often a fun musical. Finally, Year six wow us with a final musical! In the past these have included, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “Shakespeare Rocks”, “The Wizard of Oz”, “Robin Hood” and many others.

 

Year 3 Music Project

This is a project that was started in 2015 and has continued every year since. It was both set up and is run entirely by volunteers. All children in Year 3 are given the opportunity to have four free lessons on an instrument that they choose out of a given selection. These have included: violin, ‘cello, recorder, keyboard, guitar, ukulele and pbuzz (a type of plastic trombone for beginners). The project was the brain-child of our visiting music teacher, Julia Drown, who also runs the school orchestra. It is a fantastic chance for the children to try out an instrument before committing to lessons in order to see if it is the right instrument for them. A number of children have then gone on to have formal music lessons. It has been a wonderful project, which has proved popular with the children. It has also been an excellent way to get members of the community involved as we are reliant on volunteers (currently from a local secondary school) to come and teach their instrument to the children.

 

Year 5 Whole Class Instrumental Lessons

Both Year 5 classes have whole class music lessons on a specific instrument. This year they are learning to play the Ukulele. In the past we have had whole class teaching for clarinets, strings and brass instruments. A specialist music teacher teaches the whole class and then the whole year group have an opportunity to perform to the rest of the school and to parents, usually at the end of the spring and summer terms. In the past a number of children have ended up continuing lessons with the county music service and joining the school orchestra.

 

Instrumental Lessons

Currently we have visiting peripatetic music teachers for Woodwind, brass, keyboard, strings, guitar and ukulele.

 

Orchestra

We have an orchestra for Key Stage two children who play an instrument. We are grateful to our adult volunteers who support the children and make it possible to support a number of children who are relatively new to their instruments.

 

Other Musical Opportunities

There are many other musical opportunities at St. Nicholas’ School. Every year the children have a chance to showcase their talents in our school talent show. This is a talent contest in which children pay a small amount to enter and a small amount to vote for their favourite acts and the money goes towards funding different things in school, such as play equipment. This is often a fantastic opportunity for children to demonstrate their musical skills, as well as dance and many other talents.

Another annual event is Oxfordshire’s Festival of Voices. This takes place in June in the magnificent Dorchester Abbey, in Dorchester-Upon-Thames, in Oxfordshire. Around 30 children in Year five come together with approximately 200 children from other schools in Oxfordshire to sing a collection of between 15-20 songs which they learn during the second half of the spring term and the first half of the summer term. It is a fantastic occasion and one that children often remember taking part in for years afterwards.

We are also building links with local secondary schools and have pupils from Magdalen College School who come in once a week to help with our Year 3 music project, teaching the children different instruments. We are also developing a link with The Dragon School and are looking forward to taking our Year 6 children to The Dragon School for a Gamelan Music and Puppet-making workshop in January 2026.

In the last couple of years we also introduced a ‘Music Week’. During music week we have workshops for each year group. These have included simple classroom percussion workshops for KS1 and Drumming and Gamelan workshops for KS2. We also included things such as every class inventing their own circle dance using music from different countries. Music was also incorporated into P4C, with children answering questions such as ‘What would the world be like without music?’ Parents and carers also got involved with our ‘Stay and Sing’ sessions, in which they joined us for our different key stage singing assemblies. The week was a huge success and we are looking forward to our next one in October 2025, which will also include our first teatime concert.