Music

Subject Intent

What is our intent for all children to achieve in this subject?

At St Mark’s, it is our intent that we make music an enjoyable learning experience. We encourage children to participate in a variety of musical experiences through which we aim to build up the confidence of all children. Our teaching focuses on developing the children’s ability to understand rhythm and follow a beat. Through singing songs, children learn about the structure and organisation of music. We teach them to listen and to appreciate different forms of music. Children develop descriptive language skills in music lessons when learning about how music can represent different feelings, emotions and narratives. We also teach technical vocabulary such as volume, pitch, beat and rhythm and encourage children to discuss music using these terms.

Curriculum Overview

Development Plan Summary

This is a summary of how our school delivers music education to all our pupils across three areas – curriculum music, co-curricular provision and musical experiences – and what changes we are planning in future years:

Music Development Plan Summary – 2024/25

Music Mark

We are proud to announce that for another year, St. Mark’s has been awarded ‘Music Mark School’. This is awarded to us in recognition of the value that we place on music for our children and community.

Being a Music Mark School, allows us to receive a range of tailored benefits to ensure we are providing the best music provision possible, such as: additional support and training for staff, newsletters for us to keep up to date with new resources and events, wider publication of success stories from our school, and much more.

See our certificate below:

Music Mark Certificate of Recognition – 2023/24

Services for Education – Birmingham

At St. Mark’s we work closely with Services for Education, who provide our KS2 children with weekly recorder lessons. All children in KS2 have access to a recorder, which they can take home to continue practising. As well as our weekly lessons, we provide small group and 1:1 additional lessons for our PP children and those who are gifted and talented in music. Our rationale for teaching recorders across KS2 are:

Learning an instrument takes times to embed, therefore we will teach recorders across KS2 rather than the children learning different instruments each year.
Recorders are easy for the children to carry so children who walk to school can still transport their recorders to and from school. This will allow them to embed their learning and practise at home, making it accessible for all children.
Learning the recorders gives children an introduction into wind instruments and the skills they have learnt are transferable when they move to secondary school.
Recorders are relatively easy instrument so the children will experience success after a few lessons and be motivated to continue.
Staff are familiar with resources on Charanga which support teachers to allow children to use their recorders in other music lessons.
Recorders are affordable for children to be provided with one each, rather than needing to share instruments.
Recorders will allow the children to build their knowledge on controlling sound. Regular lessons will allow children to progress gradually.

Totally RAD Music Lessons

Alongside our classroom music lessons and recorder lessons, provided by Services for Education, St. Mark’s works in partnership with Totally RAD Music. RAD believe that whatever the skill level or budget, all children deserve access to exceptional music tuition. Their highly skilled network of professional musicians provide next-level tuition for the next generation of talent, no matter the location, budget or capability. Provided on-site, within school hours and at a highly-competitive rate; with RAD, our children experience expert music tuition that helps them sharpen skills, express creativity, and dream BIG. 1:1 lessons and small group lessons take place weekly at St. Mark’s, allowing the children to learn piano, guitar or drums, on top of our classroom lessons and recorder lessons.

Year 6 presented their first ever Recorder Concert

The audience and performers joined with 'We Will Rock You'

More Information

What our children say…

“The best thing about music is that we get to sing along to lots of different songs. I also enjoy playing lots of different instruments.” – Year 4 pupil

“My favourite thing about Music is when we play on the glockenspiels. We composed our own musical patterns using the notes F and G. We recorded ourselves doing a live performance so that our parents could hear our talents.” – Year 5 pupil

“We talked about how music effects our feelings and our opinions about different songs. We researched famous women artists and looked at a timeline. My favourite artist is Dolly Parton.” – Year 6 pupil