Music at Brimscombe

‘Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity’.  It fosters social and emotional development, self-expression and cultural awareness. It promotes teamwork and collaboration as children learn to play and sing together whilst also building self-confidence and resilience. Music can improve listening skills, concentration and the ability to follow instructions. It helps children to think creatively and critically and enhances cognitive skills like pattern recognition, memory retention and problem-solving abilities. 

There are so many benefits to music and here at Brimscombe, we recognise this, and feel strongly that every child should receive a great music education that inspires them to develop a love of music, throughout their time with us and into their future years.

Learning about music and having the opportunity to play musical instruments and make music together is a vital part of our rich and rounded curriculum. With dedicated lessons that follow the national curriculum, daily collective worship and a range of extra-curricular musical opportunities, Brimscombe facilitates the opportunity for all children to engage and inspire their musical curiosity. We encourage the   children’s discovery of music across a wide variety of musical cultures, providing a range of musical instruments to discover and explore on their learning journey.

Collective Worship

Our daily collective worship aims to foster spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development and music is a big part of this. We enjoy singing and having time to reflect whilst listening to a variety of traditional but also modern, child friendly, worship songs.

Curriculum intent

EYFS

Within the Early Years curriculum, music lessons explore the following areas:

• Invent, adapt and recount narratives and stories with peers and their teacher.
• Sing a range of well-known nursery rhymes and songs.
• Perform songs, rhymes, poems and stories with others, and move in time with music.

 

Across KS1 and KS2, each class has a weekly dedicated music lesson in which they explore the following areas:

 

KS 1

• An introduction to the interrelated dimensions of music.
• Sing songs, chants and rhymes.
• Play tuned and untuned classroom instruments.
• Listen to and appraise a wide range of music from different genres, cultures and periods.
• Start to explore a named composer.
• Combine sounds to create music.
• Explore pulse, rhythm and pitch.

 

KS 2

• A deeper understanding of interrelated dimensions of music.
• Sing, play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts.
• Improvise and compose music for a range of purposes, including the use of music technology.
• Appreciate and understand a wide variety of historical periods, styles, traditions through listening, singing, playing,
• evaluating, analysing and composing.
• A deeper exploration into named composers.
• Continue to develop playing skills on both tuned and untuned classroom instruments.
• Use and understand staff notation.
• Develop an aural memory for rhythm and pitch.
• All children learn the recorder as part of the Wider Curriculum initiative. 

Annual Shows

Each year, all children at Brimscombe are also provided with the opportunity to take part in either our Christmas Nativity or our end of Year performance. Children learn a variety of songs and have opportunities to perform solos, as part of small groups or a larger choir. Children who play instruments are also given additional opportunities here, to perform to larger audiences.

Extra Curriculuar

Music Lessons

As well as a broad music curriculum, pupils at Brimscombe have the option to take part in peripatetic music lessons through one of our many music teachers. We currently offer the following lessons: keyboard, piano, guitar, ukele and violin. We also use Rock Steady (https://www.rocksteadymusicschool.com/) where children become part of a school band and perform at Rock Concerts in the School Hall 6 times a year. These music lessons do come with a weekly cost. 

For more information about peripatetic music lessons, please speak to the school office.

Young Voices Choir

Each year we provide the pupils in year 4, 5 and 6 with the opportunity to take part in the Young Voices Choir, where from September through to January they participate in weekly choir rehearsals, learning a variety of songs across different genres of music. Not only does this provide our children at Brimscombe with the opportunity to be part of a musical ensemble but it also provides them with the confidence to perform on stage with their peers, in front of a variety of audiences, including being part of the largest choir in the world. Here they also get to experience live musical performances at least once per year.