Music

Intent

At Summerlea School, we aspire to help pupils recognise themselves as musical and to nurture a lifelong love of music.

We develop the skills, knowledge, and understanding needed to become confident performers, composers, and listeners. The curriculum introduces pupils to music from across the world, encouraging respect and appreciation for the music of all traditions and communities.

Pupils build musical skills through singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, improvising, composing and listening and responding to music. They develop an understanding of the historical and cultural context of the music they encounter and learn how music can be notated.

Our Music curriculum also supports the development of transferable skills, including teamwork, leadership, creative thinking, problem-solving, decision-making and presentation and performance abilities. These skills are integral to pupils’ development as learners and have wide application in their lives beyond school.

Implementation

The music curriculum ensures students sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate. This is embedded in classroom activities using the Kapow music scheme to provide a weekly music lesson.The elements of music are taught through this scheme so that children are able to use some of the language of music to dissect it, and understand how it is made, played, appreciated and analysed. Pupils also learn how to read basic music notation and create their own ways of recording their own and others’ music. Composing or performing using body percussion and vocal sounds is also part of the curriculum, which develops the understanding of musical elements without the added complexity of an instrument.

Pupils also participate in weekly singing assemblies and performances that are annually timetabled to allow all children the opportunity to engage with a variety of audiences. Children are taught to play tuned and untuned percussion instruments throughout their time at Summerlea. 

Our school also has a number of skilled peripatetic music teachers offering a range of musical tuition in addition to the school curriculum and our liaison with West Sussex Music Hub allows the school to access Whole Class Ensemble Tuition, giving each child in Year 4 a chance to learn a musical instrument for a term.

 Music Factor is a popular feature of our weekly Celebration Assembly, exposing both staff and puplis to a wide range of music genres. 

Summerlea Voice gives each class an opportunity to select, rehearse and perform a song to the rest of the school in the summer term and was enjoyed by all who took part, creating a wonderful feeling of support and community for all and freeing many from their inhibitions!

Musical opportunities are also offered as extra-curricular activities with our ‘Summerlea Singers’ performing successfully at our Candlelit Carol Concert at Christmas and the locality Celebration of Song event at TLA. Our Summer Showcase celebrated musical talent in our school, with performances from singers, dancers and instrumentalists. We are looking forward to rehearsing for further performances in our community this year. 

Rocksteady also provide children the opportunity to learn to play an instrument in a band setting, along with frequent performances to parents and other children.