Music Makers - King's Ford Academy

*** We are VERY excited to be taking part in this year's Colchester Music Festival

Charter Hall

Thursday 27th March 2025***

At King's Ford Academy we use the Kapow Primary Music scheme to support teaching the National Curriculum for music. 

Intent

The intention of our music curriculum is first and foremost to help children to feel that they are musical, and to develop a life-long love of music. We focus on developing the skills, knowledge and understanding that children need in order to become confident performers, composers, and listeners. Our curriculum introduces children to music from all around the world and across generations, teaching children to respect and appreciate the music of all traditions and communities.

Children will develop the musical skills of singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, improvising and composing music, and listening and responding to music. They will develop an understanding of the history and cultural context of the music that they listen to and learn how music can be written down. Through music, our curriculum helps children develop our core values of leadership, initiative, organisation, community and resilience.  These skills are vital to children’s development as learners and have a wider application in their general lives outside and beyond school.

Implementation

In our classrooms, children experience a growing appreciation and understanding of Music in its many forms whilst building performance skills, via a progressive, exciting, contemporary and relevant, music scheme offered by Kapow Primary. The scheme enables pupils to meet the end of key stage attainment targets outlined in the national curriculum and the aims of the scheme align with those in the national curriculum.

. The expected impact of following this scheme of work is that children will: 

• Be confident performers, composers and listeners
• Show appreciation and respect for a wide range of musical styles from around the world whilst understanding how music is influenced. 
• Understand the ways in which music can be written down to help performing and composing activities
• Demonstrate and articulate an enthusiasm for music and be able to identify their own personal musical preferences
• Meet the end of key stage expectation out lined in the national curriculum for music.

Children progress in terms of tackling more complex tasks and doing more simple tasks better, as well as developing understanding and knowledge of the history of music, staff, and other musical notations, as well as the interrelated dimensions of music and more.

In each lesson, pupils will actively participate in musical activities drawn from a range of styles and traditions, developing their musical skills and their understanding of how music works. Lessons incorporate a range of teaching strategies from independent tasks, paired and group work as well as improvisation and teacher-led performances. Lessons are ‘hands-on’ and incorporate movement and dance elements, as well as making cross curricular links with other areas of learning.

Impact

The impact of our music curriculum can be constantly monitored through both formative and summative assessment opportunities. Each lesson includes guidance to support teachers in assessing pupils against the learning objectives and at the end of each unit there is often a performance element where teachers can make a summative assessment of pupils’ learning. Knowledge organisers for each unit support pupils by providing a highly visual record of the key learning from the unit, encouraging recall of practical skills, key knowledge and vocabulary.

After the implementation of Kapow Primary Music, pupils should leave primary school equipped with a range of skills to enable them to succeed in their secondary education and to be able to enjoy and appreciate music throughout their lives.

The expected impact of following the Kapow Primary Music scheme of work is that children will:

• Be confident performers, composers and listeners and will be able to express themselves musically at and beyond school.

• Show an appreciation and respect for a wide range of musical styles from around the world and will understand how music is influenced by the wider cultural, social, and historical contexts in which it is developed.

• Understand the ways in which music can be written down to support performing and composing activities.

• Demonstrate and articulate an enthusiasm for music and be able to identify their own personal musical preferences.

• Meet the end of key stage expectations outlined in the national curriculum for Music.

" We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams!"