Music
Music Lead: Mrs Gilbert
Vision
The music curriculum at Menorah Foundation School has been carefully designed to develop the children’s skills in the areas of performing, composing/improvising and listening in order to enhance their understanding of musical elements. Sometimes projects will link to topics that the children are learning about in class or the festivals around the Jewish year, but always with the intention of building their musical abilities and encouraging the exploration of any themes in a fresh, musical way.
Rhythm sticks are used all across the school for the variety of skills that they promote. The African drums, a recent addition to the music department, are another set of instruments that the children love to use and are great for teaching listening skills and making the children work together and take solos.
How We Teach Music at MFS
EYFS
A huge emphasis is placed upon feeling the pulse, as this forms the basis of many of the more complex skills the children will learn further up the school. Music lessons at this stage are mostly based around songs which the children learn to sing and then add instruments and/or actions to enhance musical expression.
Children also learn what the school percussion instruments are, what they sound like, how they feel to play and what their names are. They work at learning to play and stop in the right places, learning to play loudly and softly, and how to make patterns of sounds. There is plenty of movement at this stage to encourage children to feel the music in their bodies. Scarves and parachutes are also used.
KS1
The skills learned in Early Years are built upon with more complex performances and simple composition, often using graphic scores with shapes and pictures, to enable children to begin to think about connecting what they see with what they hear. The musical elements are constantly reinforced to allow them to become familiar with musical terminology, and different sessions of each project link to different elements to allow children to explore these more fully. They learn to play the instruments with more deliberation rather than just making the sounds. Y2 also take part in the Barnet Infant Music Festival, where they learn several songs to sing and perform with other schools, and one song just for them to perform at the festival.
LKS2
Children build on and develop all of these skills. They learn simple rhythm notation and begin to understand how pitch can be written down. They explore the timbres of the instruments in a more thoughtful way, creating deliberate music around different themes and looking at how choosing different instruments creates different effects. They also learn different musical techniques such as round, ostinato and pentatonic scales and look at other ways to write down music using graphic scores. Y4 also take part in the LSO discovery project - learning about different pieces of music and ending with an interactive concert at the Barbican, where they watch the LSO play extracts from these pieces of music live, and sing a massed song with all the other schools that are taking part.
UKS2
Children focus on different topics to develop their understanding of different types of music. In Y5, the Blues is studied – the history, the style and structure. They learn to play, sing and improvise on a 12-bar blues and then they write their own verses and perform the whole piece together as a class. They learn about Sea Shanties and build on their previous skills to add ostinato and other techniques to perform them. They study different musical structures - how music can be put together to be really effective.
Y6 explore film music – how it works and how and why it is so effective. Then they try composing their own. They learn about Samba – what it is, how it is structured, and then the class becomes a Samba band. They learn to work together as a team to produce an end result and to respect each other by listening critically and commenting on music created by different groups. They explore the broad areas of music history, linking into works with contrasting musical elements, rhythmic motifs and musical structures. They finish in the summer with a grand show, performing songs from musicals linked together with one overall theme.
Impact
As a result of our music teaching at Menorah Foundation School, you will see children who:
- Show a love and appreciation for music.
- Have developed an appreciation for music from different time periods and cultures.
- Can perform and express themselves confidently.
- Can work by themselves or together in a group to compose their own music and structure it according to different musical stimuli.
- Are equipped with an understanding of basic musical skills, laying the foundation for further musical exploration and learning in later stages of education.