Music at Barwic Parade

Intent

At Barwic Parade, we want to open up the world to our pupils, and music plays an important part in this. It is a universal language that everyone can understand. It is academic, physical and emotional.

Through their engagement in music lessons, we intend that our pupils will:

• sharpen their cognitive skills and increase their capacity to perform tasks that require sustained attention and careful listening and reading
• increase their collaborative skills through performing in groups
• develop their imagination and intellectual curiosity
• become more emotionally developed, empathic towards others and be better equipped to cope with negative emotions

We believe that children’s brains are muscles that need to be used and strengthened – that every child has the capacity to learn. Music study can help to build bridges between pieces of information within children’s working and long-term memory, resulting in their learning being more permanent.

Implementation

Early Years

Music is an integral part of the Early Years Curriculum as it develops crucial listening skills. As such, it is taught through Phase 1 phonics sessions, as well as discreet teaching sessions. The children also have regular access to music based areas of provision in which to practice and embed their skills and learning. Both Nursery and Reception children also take part in a Christmas performance for their parents.

Key Stages 1&2

In Key Stages 1 & 2, the children are taught music in weekly sessions delivered by a music teacher from Sing Education, using their own curriculum.

Musical opportunities are also built into other subjects across the curriculum where there are strong and relevant likes to be made. Key Stage 1 children perform in a Christmas musical each December, year 3/4 give a performance at Easter and year 5/6 give a performance at the end of the school year.

Pupils in KS2 have the chance to be involved in a Christmas choir who perform at the Selby Lights Switch-On in December in front of members of the public, as well as doing some Christmas fundraising by singing in supermarkets across Selby.

Pupils in Years 3,4,5 and 6 also have the opportunity to take part in Young Voices, in which they learn specially selected songs from a diverse range of sources. They then join with children from other schools to perform together as part of a massed choir of thousands.

Impact

Due to the nature of music, evaluation of the subject content is through observation by leaders of lessons, evidence uploaded to our secure school network and final performances. Further to this, pupil conferencing takes place to find out how well pupils can discuss elements of music outside of the music lesson.

Pupil achievement against the National Curriculum outcomes is tracked half-termly to show which children are working towards, meeting or exceeding the lesson objectives and which pupils are on track to be working at age related standard or beyond at the end of each Key Stage. 

Young Voices

Rehearsals are under way for Young Voices 2025 with children from years 4,5 and 6. We are getting excited about our concert date of February 14th 2025!