Music

Music

Mrs Govan is our Music Subject Leader. She is passionate about music and in particular singing as she loves to sing herself and also leads our school choir. Mrs Watson, a high school RE teacher, is our Music link Governor. 

Music is taught each week to Years 1-6 by our Junior Jam specialist music teacher, Mr Davies.

Individual music tuition is provided on Friday afternoons by Bolton Music Service if parents would like their child to learn to play an instrument. Mr Chandler teaches keyboards on Fridays.

For all the latest Music curriculum news, please click here.

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Intent

Our overarching aim at St Barnabas is for our pupils to achieve great things and live life in all its fullness. Offering a well-rounded and balanced curriculum is one way we work towards achieving this and Music provides the perfect platform for children to achieve great things and explore what living a full life might look like for them and the people around them. At St Barnabas, we believe that every child should be able to experience music and make progress during their time at primary school. The aims of our music curriculum at St Barnabas are to increase the development of musicianship through singing, listening, composing and instrumental performances. 

We are committed to ensuring children understand the value and importance of music and aim to provide a practical music curriculum, where children are introduced to a wide variety of musical genres and instruments. Alongside this, we are dedicated to providing children with opportunities both in and out of school to develop their musical performance. When a child reaches the end of their musical journey at St Barnabas, our aim is to have equipped them with the skills, confidence and understanding to further progress to the next level of their creative journey with music.

Implementation 

At St Barnabas, we believe that for children to develop a real  enjoyment for music, it is important that they are taking part in practical sessions, where they are given the opportunity to explore and develop their own musical style,  through signing, listening, composing and performing.

At St Barnabas, EYFS imbed Music throughout the curriculum through learning how to use percussion instruments to singing a variety of songs.  Music in years one to six is taught by Junior Jam, a specialist education supplier that is dedicated to providing high-quality teaching for schools. Junior Jam provides weekly music sessions that are enjoyable, dynamic and progressive. Our music curriculum is designed to meet the key skills, knowledge and understanding required by the National Curriculum, which is then planned to ensure that the skills are taught sequentially across the key stages and that new skills build on and develop the skills taught in previous year groups. 

Alongside the teaching of music in school, we also provide extra-curricular opportunities for children to further develop their love and enjoyment of music and performance. Weekly rhyme time sessions are held for children in EYFS. We have a whole school choir, which is open to all children from years two to six and children also take part in a weekly whole-school singing worship. Specialist music teachers from Bolton Music Service also offer individual instrumental and vocal tuition to children in KS1 and KS2.

Music has a rare and unique ability to bring people together and music making can make a whole class, school and community feel connected to others and part of something bigger. At St Barnabas, we are committed to ensuring that our music curriculum, provided by Junior Jam and Bolton Music Service, takes into consideration the needs of all pupils in a classroom setting, therefore ensuring that music is accessible to all, in an inclusive learning environment.

With relation to the assessment of music, Junior Jam staff record on a weekly basis, whether the overall learning objective for each session was achieved or not. As a school, we have also created our own assessment document for music in school, where Junior Jam staff record at the end of each unit, whether each child is working at, below or above year group expectations.

Impact 

The impact of providing a specialist musical programme for our children at St Barnabas, through the EYFS, Junior Jam and Bolton Music Service has had a profound impact on the children at our school. It is clear that children across all year groups are talking about music in school and most importantly,  enjoy  taking part in music lessons and extra curricular music activities. 

With the use of pictures and the school website, parents are being updated regularly with what is being taught in music each term and parents have opportunities throughout the year to come and watch their child perform music in school, through school choir performances and Bolton Music Service recitals. 

Staff in school feel comfortable knowing that specialist music teachers are delivering an exciting and enjoyable music curriculum to classes and through the use of assessment, it is clear that children are making good progress in music across school. At St Barnabas, we provide a balanced and enjoyable music curriculum to our children and this has a positive impact on the teaching and learning of music to ensure all children achieve great things and live life in all its fullness. 

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