Logo Logo Logo Logo Logo
  • Home
  • About Us
    • About SJSJ
      • Headteacher’s Welcome
      • School Vision
      • Safeguarding
      • Our Church
      • Anti-Racist Statement
      • Staff List
      • Awards & Achievements
      • Inclusion & Equalities
      • SEND: Special Educational Needs and Disabilities
      • We are a Rights Respecting School
      • Facilities for Hire
      • Current Vacancies
      • COVID Catch Up Funding
      • School Development Priorities
      • School Self Evaluation
    • School Policy
      • School Policies
      • Primary Advantage Policies
      • OFSTED & SIAMS Reports
      • Results
      • Pupil Premium Strategy
      • PE & Sport Premium
      • Financial Benchmarking
      • Union Officials Information
    • Governance
      • Our Governors
      • Local Advisory Board
    • Primary Advantage
      • Introduction
      • Our Partnerships
      • Our Teaching Schools
      • Primary Advantage Vacancies
  • News & Events
    • News Archive
    • Calendar
    • Newsletters
    • Term Dates
    • Letters for Parents
  • Curriculum
    • Teaching & Learning
      • Our Curriculum
      • Homework & Home Learning Links
      • Assessment
      • Early Years
    • Subjects
      • Art
      • Computing
      • Diverse Britain
      • Geography
      • History
      • Maths
      • Music
      • Oracy
    • Subjects
      • Physical Education
      • PSHE & Citizenship
      • Reading
      • Religious Education
      • Science
      • STEAM
      • Spanish: Modern Foreign Languages (MFL)
      • Writing
  • Wellbeing
  • COVID-19
    • Managing the Virus
    • COVID Related Communication
    • Year Group Learning Resources
    • Home Learning
    • Useful Resources & Support
  • Children
    • Year Groups
      • Nursery
      • Reception
      • Year 1
      • Year 2
      • Year 3
      • Year 4
      • Year 5
      • Year 6
    • Pupil Voice
      • RRS Team
      • School Council
      • Green Team
      • Digital Leaders
      • Sports Crew
      • Wellbeing Leaders
  • Parents
    • Admissions
      • Admissions Process
      • Extended Nursery Provision
    • Parent Information
      • Introduction & Important Information
      • The School Day
      • Behaviour
      • Attendance, Punctuality and Absence
      • School Meals
    • Parent Information
      • School Uniform
      • Online Safety
      • FAQs
    • Extended School
      • Clubs
      • Holiday Camp
  • PTA
  • Contact
  • Home
  • About Us
    • About SJSJ
      • Headteacher’s Welcome
      • School Vision
      • Safeguarding
      • Our Church
      • Anti-Racist Statement
      • Staff List
      • Awards & Achievements
      • Inclusion & Equalities
      • SEND: Special Educational Needs and Disabilities
      • We are a Rights Respecting School
      • Facilities for Hire
      • Current Vacancies
      • COVID Catch Up Funding
      • School Development Priorities
      • School Self Evaluation
    • School Policy
      • School Policies
      • Primary Advantage Policies
      • OFSTED & SIAMS Reports
      • Results
      • Pupil Premium Strategy
      • PE & Sport Premium
      • Financial Benchmarking
      • Union Officials Information
    • Governance
      • Our Governors
      • Local Advisory Board
    • Primary Advantage
      • Introduction
      • Our Partnerships
      • Our Teaching Schools
      • Primary Advantage Vacancies
  • News & Events
    • News Archive
    • Calendar
    • Newsletters
    • Term Dates
    • Letters for Parents
  • Curriculum
    • Teaching & Learning
      • Our Curriculum
      • Homework & Home Learning Links
      • Assessment
      • Early Years
    • Subjects
      • Art
      • Computing
      • Diverse Britain
      • Geography
      • History
      • Maths
      • Music
      • Oracy
    • Subjects
      • Physical Education
      • PSHE & Citizenship
      • Reading
      • Religious Education
      • Science
      • STEAM
      • Spanish: Modern Foreign Languages (MFL)
      • Writing
  • Wellbeing
  • COVID-19
    • Managing the Virus
    • COVID Related Communication
    • Year Group Learning Resources
    • Home Learning
    • Useful Resources & Support
  • Children
    • Year Groups
      • Nursery
      • Reception
      • Year 1
      • Year 2
      • Year 3
      • Year 4
      • Year 5
      • Year 6
    • Pupil Voice
      • RRS Team
      • School Council
      • Green Team
      • Digital Leaders
      • Sports Crew
      • Wellbeing Leaders
  • Parents
    • Admissions
      • Admissions Process
      • Extended Nursery Provision
    • Parent Information
      • Introduction & Important Information
      • The School Day
      • Behaviour
      • Attendance, Punctuality and Absence
      • School Meals
    • Parent Information
      • School Uniform
      • Online Safety
      • FAQs
    • Extended School
      • Clubs
      • Holiday Camp
  • PTA
  • Contact

Music

Music

Home > Curriculum  > Subjects > Music

Intent
At St John and St James’ we believe every child is a musician and aim to inspire pupils to develop a love of music and develop their talent as musicians. In turn, children increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. We help children develop their musicianship through high-quality musical experiences both in and outside school. We offer enrichment opportunities such as music projects and trips through which children can experience music in a variety of ways – with different musicians and at exciting London venues. Our ambitious and rich music curriculum aims to engage and inspire pupils to develop both a love of music and their skills as musicians. We provide children with a range of opportunities to cultivate their cultural understanding and develop their musical competencies, such as appreciating and understanding a wide range of music from different traditions. As our pupils progress through our curriculum, we teach them to engage critically with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians. By the time our children leave St John & St James, they have been equipped with this knowledge and understanding as well as having an appreciation of a breadth of musical forms.

Implementation 

Our music curriculum allows the children to develop their understanding, make musical judgements, apply their new learning, develop their aural memory, express themselves physically, emotionally and through discussion and create their own musical ideas. The children not only learn about music; they become musicians who are able to share and perform using their new skills. This is embedded in the weekly music lesson, taught by our music teacher, as well as the weekly singing assemblies, regular concerts and performances, the learning of instruments and the joining of one of our musical ensembles.

Early Years 

In the Early Years, music and movement form a valued part of every-day learning. Listening opportunities are planned to develop children’s ability to listen attentively and to move to and talk about music. Through regular opportunities to listen to music, children are supported to notice and respond to a steady beat by singing, tapping, dancing or using instruments. Children are supported to express their feelings about music and to understand that their response is personal and valued. As they progress from Nursery to Reception, children are taught to discuss changes and patterns in music. Children learn a range of songs and develop their ability to match the pitch of another person to follow the melodic shape of the song. In Nursery and Reception, children are given opportunities to play instruments and to express their feelings and ideas. They are encouraged to create their own songs inspired by familiar songs and from a range of music across the world. 

Key Stage One and Two

We use the National Curriculum to plan our units of work in music in order to ensure we develop the following skills: Listening and appraising, musical activities involving singing, playing instruments, improvisation and composition, as well as performing. Our curriculum enables children to understand musical concepts through a repetition based approach to learning. Learning about the same musical concept through different musical activities enables a more secure, deeper learning and mastery of musical skills.

Following the Charanga Music Scheme, learning is built around the Interrelated Dimensions of Music: pulse, rhythm, pitch, tempo, dynamics, timbre, texture, structure and notation. These dimensions are at the centre of all the learning; they are musical building blocks. This is an integrated approach to musical learning where games, the interrelated dimensions of music, singing and playing instruments are all linked (spiral of learning).

In the classroom pupils learn how to play instruments. In doing so, they understand the different principle of each method of creating notes, as well as how to read basic music notation. They also learn how to compose focusing on different dimensions of music, which in turn feeds their understanding when listening, playing, or analysing 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.

Each year level has an instrumental focus that gives children a chance to experience quality musical learning over the course of that year.

EYFS Singing tunefully and internalising beat/body percussion
Year 1 Untuned Percussion, Glockenspiels
Year 2 Tuned and Untuned Percussion, Glockenspiels
Year 3 Keyboard, Ukulele
Year 4 Keyboard, Ukulele
Year 5 Ukulele, Guitar
Year 6 Guitar

We offer enrichment opportunities such as music projects and trips that children can experience music in a variety of ways; with different musicians and at exciting London venues. As a church school, music forms an important part of our worship.  We sing together in assembly every day and for special celebrations, we gather as a school community at our local church.

Many children participate in our school choirs and perform both in and out of school. We share our love of music as a whole school in special performances such as Black History Month, Christmas and Easter.

Impact

The music teacher regularly assesses children’s progress in music through watching and listening to children’s performances, evaluating their technical, expressive and constructive knowledge. Children are also involved in peer and self-assessment opportunities against specific criteria and are taught to analyse their performances to draw out areas of strength and next steps.

Music Curriculum Map

To view our Music curriculum map, please click here. 

Music News

  • Latest News
    What's happening in Year 4 - Week 3
    Earlier today, Year 4 took part in a sound workshop, where they combined their scientific understanding of the sense of hearing, with some of their artistic skills to create beautiful pieces of art. T...
  • Latest News
    What's happening in Reception - Week 1
    In Reception we are working on mastery of the number bonds 6, 7, 8, and 9. We use 'Number Talk'  and a variety of mathematical images to support us with this. Over the last few weeks we have been usin...
  • Latest News
    Conductive music
    KS2 have all been lucky enough to have music workshops delivered by Conductive Music. Their mission is to deliver engaging music learning programs, mixing the Arts with Technology, and championing the...
  • Latest News
    What's happening in Year 4 - Week 3
    Year 4 have had a busy week, filled with all things music! On Monday, the children were lucky enough to take part in a Conductive Music workshop, where they learnt about how to combine aspects of s...
  • Latest News
    What's happening in Year 3 - Week 3
    Year 3 enjoyed their Conductive Music workshop this week. It was a STEAM project, which combined music, electricity and creativity and was also a huge amount of fun too!   ...
  • Latest News
    Music
    Years 3 and 4 have been AMAZING in their music lessons this week. They worked brilliantly together to help their partners to play the tricky musical pieces on our instruments. This included reading mu...
  • Latest News
    Music
    We have had a fantastic start to the new half term in Music! The children have been working hard and enjoying learning about musical theory, including learning key words such as crotchet and minim. ...
  • Latest News
    What's been happening in Year 4 - Week 1
    This week, year 4 were lucky enough to take part in another workshop, lead by Apollo Music. The musicians brought some instruments from the brass and woodwind sections of an orchestra, and they produc...
  • Latest News
    Music
    We have had a fantastic half term in music! The children have made fantastic progress in singing and playing their instruments in unison, finding the tempo of the music, and appraising different mu...
  • Latest News
    London Symphony Orchestra
    LSO have assembled a collection of musical activities, concerts and resources for young people from age 5 and up to enjoy at home while concerts with audiences are still restricted. Whether you pla...
Related Pages
  • Art
  • Computing
  • Reading
  • Writing
  • History
  • Oracy
  • Geography
  • Maths
  • Spanish: Modern Foreign Languages (MFL)
  • Music
  • Physical Education
  • STEAM
  • Science
  • Religious Education
  • Diverse Britain
  • PSHE & Citizenship
Get in Touch

St John and St James C of E Primary School,
Isabella Road,
Hackney
E9 6DX

Tel: 020 8985 2045
Fax: 020 8985 5768
Email: office@johnjames.hackney.sch.uk

Executive Principal: Sian Davies
Headteacher: Joanne Smith

Primary Advantage

The Primary Advantage Federation are a group of 8 schools working together because we believe our schools can gain many benefits from working collaboratively.

Visit Website