Intent
At St Catherine's we want all children to develop the self-confidence, skills, knowledge, and understanding to develop a lifelong love of music, whilst also providing a secure foundation that enables them to take music further should they wish to.
We aspire for our children to:
- Learn to sing well and enjoy singing
- Develop musical skills and understanding
- Experience the wider learning and developmental benefits that singing and music making provides
- Experience long-term benefits to their health and well-being
Implementation
At St Catherine's we follow the SingUp! curriculum. We know that taking part in musical activity provides positive benefits for individuals, communities, schools and society in general. We believe that singing specifically supports learning, personal and social development, promotes health and well-being and bonds communities of people like no other activity.
Singing in particular links up most areas of our brain because of the involvement of language which centres through the connection of music and lyrics. Sing Up, primarily focusses on how music and singing build those neural pathways in young children. There's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do this, and we want every child - without exception - to benefit from that. This is our starting point for all that we do.
Sing Up Music is based on the premise of every child throughout the school taking part in a music lesson every week. There is a scheme of work for Reception, and Year 1 through to Year 6. Sing Up Music lessons are structured on the basis of the most commonly found lesson timings following on our consultation with teachers. The lengths of lessons in Sing Up Music units are as follows:
• 30 minutes per lesson for Early Years.
• 40 minutes per lesson for KS1.
• 50 minutes per lesson for KS2.
In addition to these class based lessons all children participate in weekly singing assemblies where children come together and sing a variety of songs from our Out of the Ark song archive.
Music is embedded throughout our school, to support the needs of all our children. Music is a key focuses of our sensory learning breaks and is used to calm and regulate our children. Music is enjoyed within individual classes and children are actively involved in created class playlists.
Our children are offer many performing opportunities, from school productions, school shows, Mass, and local concerts with partnering schools.
Impact
Through the musical activities provided and encouraged, children at St Catherine’s are given the opportunity to understand the language of music more fully and participate in making music. Fostering children’s love of music and developing their talents as musicians, increases their confidence, creativity and feelings of achievement.