At St Michael’s we provide high quality Music teaching through our Explore Curriculum. Underpinned by the National Curriculum, our Music curriculum holds our children and their aspirations, environment and development at its heart. Whilst allowing them to build their knowledge, skills and resilience, it also prepares them for their future as citizens of Liverpool and the wider world.

Music at St Michael’s engages and inspires pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians whilst increasing their self-confidence and creativity. We embrace our children’s spiritual needs and celebrate their cultural diversity. Here at St Michael’s we see music as a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity.

As pupils progress, they develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, listen and evaluate the best in the musical canon. By the time our children reach the end of their primary journey, children will have explored a wide range of musical literature, have the ability to use a broad and varied vocabulary, explore a range of composers, and have had a plethora of life enriching experiences that they would not have the opportunity to have outside of school. Through retrieval, children will build upon their knowledge and skills to enable them to unlock new learning and explore their talents.

Our Teaching & Learning Pedagogy

We have developed our pedagogy and curriculum in line with Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction. We ensure that through effective teaching, we support pupils in learning more and remembering more. At the heart of our practice and a key driver in securing progress for our learners is retrieval practice. Planned for every Music lesson, retrieval practice aims to quiz learners, exposing them repeatedly to newly acquired knowledge as well as previously taught knowledge until learners are secure. Retrieval practice can take many forms in Music e.g. through our Friday quizzing, spaced retrieval and oral questioning. For example, in Early Years, children are taught about high and low notes. The children constantly retrieve this information, deepening their understanding of pitch, conveying it in different mediums in Key Stage 1. As children transition to Key Stage 2, they continue to retrieve this knowledge, become sophisticated in the performing the concept, and use ambitious vocabulary to evaluate what they have listened to and compose their own. 

Talk like a Musician

Our Music curriculum aims to develop a higher level of Musical Vocabulary for by our children from EYFS to Y6. This development of vocabulary should be well sequenced to ensure progression and challenge as the children progress through the school.

Vocabulary should be taught explicitly throughout every Music lesson using our whole school techniques such as ‘My turn, your turn’, using a variety of voices for repetition and the ‘Word Aware rap’ where appropriate. This high level vocabulary is retrieved explicitly as part of each lesson as well as through application of writing within lessons. For example, in Year 2 children are challenged to learn vocabulary related to the various elements of Music, such as describing the tempo of a piece of music. As this knowledge is retrieved and made secure, children in Key Stage 2 can use challenging vocabulary such as ‘allegro’ or ‘largo’.

At St. Michael’s, we encourage our children to demonstrate the key attributes of a musician by practising these skills:

• Listening – we give the our children the opportunity to listen and respond to music from a range of different artists and composers
• Creativity – our children can express themselves through music by singing, playing an instrument or making a beat
• Confidence – being able to perform in front of others – such a brave thing to do!
• Communication – being able to work with a partner or in a group to compose or perform, discuss ideas and help and support each other.

At St. Michael’s we are so lucky to have specialist teachers who help our children reach their full potential, whether that is playing an instrument such as the ukulele, glockenspiel, or singing and having the chance to perform in school and at external events.

High quality texts are used to supplement our Music curriculum where appropriate, providing opportunities for children to see Musical content in books they enjoy and to support our School Improvement priority of improving reading across the school. Our Music reading spine highlights our driver books for each year group which can be found within each class library. Children are encouraged to explore Music books not only during their Reading for Pleasure time but also through Whole class guided reading sessions where appropriate.

See some of our latest additions below as well as our Reading Spine for Music.

Just click a button below to View any document, you will then have the option to Download or Print the file. You can access all of our policies and reports on the website. Please contact the school if you would like any paper versions of our documents.