Music
Music at Newton Hill Community School provides an opportunity for children to develop their creativity and imagination as well as improve their listening skills and express their personal thoughts and feelings.
Our newly created Music Room, provides a great space for children to get practically involved in a variety of genres of music during their Music lessons with easy access to the range of tuned and untuned instruments.
At Newton Hill Community School our Music plan is as follows;
In Foundation Stage children begin their introduction to music in Nursery through their Phase 1 Letters and Sounds lessons. These daily lessons focus on different aspects of music, including; environmental sounds, instrumental sounds, body percussion, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration and voice sounds. Within these lessons, children learn a wide range of different percussion instruments and the different types of noise they can make. These instruments are then available for children in designated music areas of continuous provision for children to access independently. Over a series of lessons and independent learning children are taught to;
- Build a repertoire of songs
- Explore different sounds of instruments and how these can be changed
- Begin to move rhythmically and tap out simple rhythms
Once in Reception, the children follow ‘Funky FEET’ which is a collection of original musical activities and songs created by Wakefield Music Services. The activities encourage language skills, help to develop co-ordination and improve speaking and listening skills.
The children focus on four different units per term which can be seen on the school’s long term plan.
In Key Stage One and Two music is taught weekly by the teachers. A long-term plan has been created by the Music Leader which uses a range of teaching resources to ensure a broad and balanced music curriculum.
One of the resources used by Newton Hill is ‘Charanga,’ a resource subsidised by Wakefield Music Service. This resource includes a complete scheme to teach the national curriculum for music, a vast library of songs, topics, instrument courses and creative apps as well as in depth support for assessment, SEND and personalised teaching and learning.
Alongside this, lessons are planned using a range of resources provided by the BBC which provides lesson plans and teacher resources which can be accessed as a whole class or requires the children to use their ICT skills to compose and edit music.
The long-term scheme also ensures that the children in Key Stage Two learn about classical pieces using BBC’s ‘Ten Piece’ scheme where each year group will focus on a different composer.
Where possible, cross curricular links are made to ensure Music supports the topics being taught in each year group.
The curriculum is supported by well-resourced tuned and untuned percussion instruments, recorders, ukuleles, Ipads and class sets of laptops.
The school also offer a singing club. The choir perform in assemblies, productions and celebrations have previously attended Young Voices.
Wakefield Music Services provide instrumental lessons for children, as paid for by families. The children receive weekly individual or small group lessons for the piano, guitar and strings.
Termly loans of instruments can be borrowed from Wakefield Music Service such as Djembe drums for Upper Key Stage Two’s Africa topic.
The school has a ‘Composer of The Month’ display, each month focuses on a different composer and information about them is shared on the display and on an accompanying PowerPoint. The songs from this composer are played during assemblies for the children to experience a breadth of genres/artists and musical styles.