At Newburgh Primary, we intend for all children to have the opportunity to experience a rich range of musical experiences, through both high-quality music lessons and extra-curricular opportunities. Through listening, singing, playing, analysing and composing across a wide variety of historical periods, styles, traditions and musical genres, we intend for children at Newburgh to develop their self-confidence, a critical engagement with music, and an understanding and acceptance of all types of music. During weekly singing assemblies we gather together as a school to celebrate music and be part of a Newburgh singing community.
Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. A high quality music education should engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon.
Our aim is for pupils to develop the following skills:
- Perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians.
- Learn to sing and to use their voices, to create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, use technology appropriately and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence.
- Understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the inter-related dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.
Our aim is that all pupils will develop a love for music and be inspired to develop their own musical talents through the opportunities that we provide.
In recognition of our commitment to providing high quality music provision for all our children we have recently achieved the music mark!
Music Events
Performance and workshop from The London Haydn Quartet
Our KS2 pupils were treated to a live performance by a string quartet called the London Haydn. The players introduced their instruments and spent time talking about the composer Joseph Haydn looking at and demonstrating his ornamental style. Did you know that Haydn was a trailblazer – changing the style of music in this Classical period?
The group took lots of questions from the children afterwards and played a full movement – there were a number of unexpected rests where we thought that the piece had finished. We found out that Hadyn was almost playing with his audience!
A wonderful morning with the Orchestra of the Swan
Newburgh pupils were given the opportunity to work with some amazing musicians, this time, from the Orchestra of the Swan and Stuart Thompson. As always, we were also lucky to have the help and expertise of Mr Binnie on this occasion too.
To begin, the musicians introduced their instruments and performed an interactive set for our KS2 and Year 2 children – we were treated to lots of interesting sounds especially from the trombone! The children tapped the pulse as the flautist played the Sailor’s Hornpipe getting faster and faster! (Accelerando – the lovely Italian musical term for this.)
Our Newburgh choir (more than 50 pupils) then worked with the musicians and Mr Thompson on a piece that we have been leaning at during our after-school choir club: ‘As long as I have music’. Our children sang incredibly beautifully in fact Mr Thompson wrote to us afterwards saying:
I just wanted to drop you a note to say how wonderful your pupils were this morning. It’s the first time that I’ve shadowed the Orchestra of the Swan players and seeing the joy on your pupils faces was so heartening. The choir was great to work with and produced a lovely recording (attached) which, after only 2 rehearsals, was quite something.
Reception and Year 1 had their own special concert with the musicians. They were completely spell bound!
The highlight of the morning was the hour before lunch when we gathered together everyone in the school who is learning to play an instrument into our school hall to make our own Newburgh Pop-up Orchestra! We had cellos, violins, clarinets, flutes, a cornet, guitars, ukuleles and percussion (our keyboard players). We worked on and performed a reel led by the wonderful musicians from the orchestra. The atmosphere was electric full of joy and music – our children were very proud of their achievements.
Thank you so much to the Orchestra of the Swan and Mr Thompson.
Music lessons are taught once a week at Newburgh Primary School by two specialist music teachers at our school. The key knowledge and skills for each year are mapped to ensure progression between years including reference to the elements of music so that children are able to use some of the language of music to understand and analyse it. Each year group gets the opportunity to sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate. The knowledge and skills to be taught in each year group are linked to class topics where possible. The planning is supplemented by Music Express, Charanga and BBC Ten Pieces. Children also experience whole class instrumental teaching for at least two half terms per key stage, learning to play the ukulele or recorder. Our provision for music is first class, we have a specialist music room which houses a plethora of musical instruments, keyboards, ukuleles, boom whackers, drums and percussion instruments.
Music in EYFS is linked to the Early Learning Goals. They are introduced to classical music and the instruments in an orchestra from the start. They also have plenty of opportunities to experiment with sound using a range of musical instruments. They learn rhymes, poems and songs to sing as part of a group or on their own. They explore moving in time to the music during dance, rhyming stories and acting out their own story.
Music is incorporated into other areas of the curriculum at Newburgh eg. counting/multiplication songs for maths, moving to music in dance lessons, Religious Festivals, and providing the atmospheric music in drama. We hold whole school music days where children complete a carousel of activities, allowing the children to explore how music links to dance, art, poetry and drama.
Music provision is further enhanced through visits from external musicians to perform for the children and working with specialist through the Warwick a Singing Town or Warwickshire Sings projects!
Additional music teaching:
Children are offered the opportunity to study a musical instrument with peripatetic teachers. Peripatetic music teaching is organised by the Music Hub. Parents and carers who want their children to participate in the scheme must purchase or hire the instrument and pay the additional music lesson fees on a termly basis. These lessons are normally taught to small groups of children who have chosen to learn one of a variety of instruments, such as the guitar, violin, clarinet or flute. This is in addition to the normal music teaching of the school, and usually takes place during normal lessons, from which children are withdrawn for the duration of the instrumental lesson.
Extra-Curricular opportunities
We have two choirs, a boys and girls choir, who perform regularly at a range of venues and will work with specialist organisations to a very high standard.
They have performed for our local care homes, at St Mary's church and other local venues.
Music assessment is ongoing to inform teachers with their planning, lesson activities and differentiation. Children are assessed as having met the music objectives set in the National Curriculum and mapped into our assessment system INSIGHTS.
Music is monitored throughout all year groups using a variety of strategies such as folder/book scrutinies, photo/video evidence, lesson observations and pupil interviews. Summative assessment is completed at the end of each unit to inform leaders of the improvements or skills that still need to be embedded.
