At Elms, the music curriculum is taught from Lower school to the end of year 8. Research has suggested that music has a positive impact on the wellbeing of children and encourages their learning of both academic and life skills.

The Elms music curriculum has been designed with the individual needs of our children at the heart of it, where the skills progression is clear but can be taught from the pupil’s existing knowledge base. This supports teachers in planning practical, engaging lessons and teach the pupils the knowledge and understanding required to excel in this subject.

Music at Elms is a physically engaging part of the curriculum, where much of the learning takes place by providing pupils with experiences of music and the exploration of sounds. This is designed to complement the academic learning of music alongside the skills obtained.

As part of the arts faculty, we have been able to provide pupils with workshops from visiting specialist teachers and promote a love of music for all pupils with exciting assemblies. The assemblies and visits from professional musicians are extremely popular with the pupils, has encouraged the exploration of music from a variety of genre’s, and inspired our pupils to extend their individual skills.

Our music resources include a variety of instruments from around the world, and the use of ICT supports the learning taking place by providing children with experiences of music they may not have had before. Teachers will use the musical interests of the children as a starting point to develop interesting ways to explore music that the pupils will enjoy.

The music curriculum aims to:

• Teach pupils a variety of musical concepts and give them a foundation of knowledge to build their skills upon.
• Develop children’s confidence in both performance and skill development.
• Provide a strong basis through creativity for pupils to explore music freely.
• Encourage children to develop a love of learning through the excitement of actively engaging lessons.

22nd February 2021