“The Music Department is an alternate universe where pupils are often unrecognisable from who they are outside of it. The shy become confident. The agitated become calm. The lonely become included. The quiet become heard. And the lost become found. Music reveals the real child.”

Vaughan Fleischfresser

“I like music because it is fun and it makes me feel calm and happy.”  Year 3 pupil

"I like music because it helps me feel connected to others." Year 5 pupil

"What I like about music is the party feeling!" Year 5 pupil

"I like music because it always cheers me up when I'm sad." Year 5 pupil

"What I like about music lessons is the different topics we work on." Year 6 pupil

Intent

At TAB Junior School we are incredibly passionate about music, and it is our intent to nurture a life-long love and appreciation of all styles of music. We have a very well-resourced room, with a specialised curriculum being delivered by two specialist music teachers. Every child has a 45-minute lesson of music each week. We have 9 specialist peripatetic staff who visit our school to deliver a wide range of private instrumental lessons. We also have an incredibly wide range of exciting extra-curricular opportunities and ensemble groups, including choirs, bands and drumming groups.

We strongly believe that music is fundamental to our children’s education, which can enhance key life skills such as increased confidence, development of social skills and enable them to tap into their inner creative spirits.

Our aim is to enable children to be motivated, effective and independent life-long learners regardless of background, ability and additional needs. By offering a stimulating and carefully structured experience in music, we enable each individual child to develop the capacity and the capability for artistic thought and critical awareness, and develop the necessary skills to enable them to succeed.

Implementation 

We recognise that if our children have access to high quality experiences this will ultimately raise standards and promote accelerated learning.

We have designed our own specialist music curriculum, which incorporates all elements of the National Curriculum for music. We can boast that our specialist curriculum provides many children with an ‘above the expected’ level in music once they arrive at secondary school. Our curriculum is both knowledge and skills based. The children sing, play, listen and evaluate. The children are taught to play tuned and untuned percussion, the keyboard, ukulele, recorder, boomwhackers, use body percussion and sing. They learn to use key musical vocabulary when talking about music that they hear and when evaluating their own and others work. The children also gain an understanding of basic traditional and graphic notation. We use music technology where appropriate with the use of Chrome Music Lab, Band Lab and the multitrack function on our specialist keyboards. They also use music technology to create layer composition work and arrange their own versions of simple pieces.

Performance opportunities

Performance opportunities are important at TAB Junior School. We celebrate Christmas with a special Christmas concert at our local church. Our year 3 children have the opportunity to perform in our school nativity show. We have a large yearly performance at the Assembly Hall in Worthing where all our groups take part, which amounts to nearly 200 children. We have a summer celebration concert and recital evening at the end of each academic year. Our Samba Band and choir regularly attend events in the community.

Weekly instrumental lessons are available for flute, saxophone, clarinet, violin, trumpet, trombone, African and world percussion, guitar, bass guitar, ukulele, piano, keyboard, voice, and drums.

We have a wide range of extracurricular activities available, including a year group lunch time club, two recorder groups, Ukulele Group, Indigo Band, TAB Band, Rock Band, Guitar group, Year 3 and 4 singers, Year 5 and 6 singers and Samba Band.

Impact

Our vision is to equip each child with the tools to enable them to play a future positive role in the wider community. We do this by nurturing our children to become ambitious learners so that they demonstrate passion about their learning and are motivated to achieve the very best they can both now and in the future, embodying all of the TAB Way values. Through music, we aim to stretch the children to reach their full potential, and promote the development of self-esteem and confidence.

 This will be evident through:

• A musical understanding underpinned by high levels of aural perception, internalisation and knowledge of music, including high or rapidly developing levels of technical expertise.
• A good awareness and appreciation of different musical traditions and genres.
• An excellent understanding of musical provenance – the historical, social and cultural origins of music and how it contributes to the diversity of musical styles.
• The ability to give precise verbal explanations, using musical terminology effectively, accurately, and appropriately.
• A passion for and commitment for a diverse range of musical activities.
• A good knowledge of performance skills on a wide range of instruments.