Music

The Music Curriculum at St Catherine’s is designed to foster a love of and appreciation for music, offering a variety of styles and activities for the children to experience.   The children receive dedicated music lessons, designed to give a firm understanding and experience of the 5 core elements of music: Performing, composing, inter related dimensions of music, listening and the history of music.  We contextualise our curriculum to be unique for St Catherine’s and to celebrate special events as they occur.

Using instruments and composing is an essential part of our curriculum, allowing all children the opportunity to express themselves creatively.  Our compositions are based around a style or piece of music, which will be listened to, discussed and used as a stimulus for our own creations.  Lessons include an element of singing, listening and the inter related dimensions of music, such as understanding notation, note values, rhythm and dynamics.  The children will use these elements in their own music compositions.

Singing is at the heart of St Catherine’s, we pride ourselves on our childrens’ beautiful voices and celebrate these regularly at school events.  The children have weekly singing assemblies where we rehearse and learn both new and challenging music, alongside some of our favourites. All the children sing during Mass and other school services.

In Year 4 the children learn to play the recorder, in line with the new model curriculum, this gives them experience of playing an instrument, ensemble playing, understanding and reading notation. It also offers the opportunity to compose and notate tunes.  Going on from this they are able to use their recorders in Years 5 and 6.

Our curriculum celebrates World Music, blues and Jazz, rap, hip hop and a variety of other styles.  These are regularly looked at in many of our topics, to compare and contrast different styles of music.

Our Aims

EYFS

• To enjoy singing, joining in with actions. We learn a variety of simple songs, actions songs and nursery rhymes.
• To understand simple musical concepts such as loud, quiet, fast, slow, stop – through song and using instruments.
• To use instruments correctly and with control.

KS1

1. To develop the children’s ability to sing confidently together and individually with accurate pitching and intonation, and expression
2. Introduce children to controlling and performing using instruments
3. Develop a strong sense of pitch and rhythm
4. Expose children to a wide range of styles and forms of music.
5. Create a descriptive and analytical vocabulary for discussing and interpreting music.

KS2

• To learn an instrument by the end of the key stage:

         - Year 4 will be learning the recorder this year inline with the new Model Music Curriculum

• Develop a clear understanding of how to use their voice to sing and perform expressively both in groups and individually.
• Compose music using a range of techniques and for different purposes.
• Have a working knowledge of stick notation and rhythm.
• Respond analytically and discuss music we listen to using an appropriate vocabulary.
• By the end of key stage children will be familiar with, and developed an understanding of, a range of different historical and socio-cultural styles of music.

Peripatetic Lessons

St Catherine’s currently provides individual tuition in a variety of musical instruments. Our teachers are both private teachers and Barnet Education Arts Trust teachers.  We currently offer lessons in:

Woodwind	Flute, Clarinet, Saxophone, Recorder
Strings	Violin
Keyboard	Piano
Guitar	Acoustic
Singing

If you are interested in either Piano or Violin, please head to the BEAT website to register an interest.  If you are interested in Singing, Guitar or Woodwind, please contact the school office (office@stcatherines.barnetmail.net).

Music