Music
We love music at our school!
Our music curriculum intends to inspire creativity, self-expression and encourages our children on their musical journeys as well as giving them opportunities to connect with others. We hope to foster a life-long love of music by exposing them to diverse musical experiences and igniting a passion for music. By listening and responding to different musical styles, finding their voices as singers and performers and as composers, children will become confident, reflective musicians.
The aims of our Music curriculum are to develop pupils who:
- Can sing and use their voices individually and in a group
- Create and compose music on their own and with others
- Use technology appropriately when composing
- Have opportunities to learn a musical instrument
- Understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated
- Listen to, review and evaluate the work of great composers and musicians from a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions
- Enjoy and have an appreciation of a range of different musical styles e.g. Classical, Jazz, Hip Hop, Pop, Rock etc.
- Use and understand musical language and include musical features in their own work
- Make judgements about the quality of music
- Have opportunities to play a wide variety of instruments
- Have different opportunities to take part in performances
Please see below, the full 3 i’s document. You can also see our progression of skills document and the curriculum mapping information. The Muiscal Spotlight Descriptions document gives further information on what the children learn for each unit of work.
In addition to taught music lessons in class, we provide our children with many other musical enrichment opportunities. We have for many years provided our Lower KS2 children with First Access instrumental teaching. The school has its own set of violins and, through funds raised by a local Music Quiz and our PTA, they all receive weekly violin lessons, taught as a year group. As a school, we also have individual and small group instrumental lessons available for piano, guitar and drums, from visiting peripatetic teachers.
Langley Fitz has a long record of joining up with other local schools to put on muscial events. We have sung in John Cole’s Park and the Olympiad Sports Centre, to name a few. In 2024 our school participated in the Young Voices concert in a huge arena in Birmingham along with thousands of other singers and professional musicians – It was amazing!
Exposure to live music is also very important to us. Over the last year, we have had live musical performances from a Welsh Brass Trio and the Shelburne Ensemble. We also watch live streams of children’s orchestral concerts including the BBC National Orchestra of Wales – Ten Pieces Watch Party. We embrace links with music technology. Over the Summer term, our children had a visitor join us to create music through computer games on an Olympic theme. Our KS2 children have a Computing unit learning to use GarageBand on our set of iPads; this is always a favourite in the classroom. One of our recent KS2 Summer productions was Joseph, and we followed our performance with a KS2 visit to the Bristol Hippodrome to watch it on stage! Our KS1 and Early Year children perform a Nativity show every Christmas that is filled with music and actions.
At the start and end of our Collective Worships, we listen to a range of Great Composers’ music. Over the last year this has included works by Bach, Chopin, Gershwin, Scott Joplin, Tchaikovsky and Debussy. Every week we have a Collective Worship focused on singing, and songs are taught from the piano in Cherry Hall. We love to sing a range of modern and traditional primary school songs, and we regularly sing in our local church for different services.
We put on an annual Music Concert at our local village hall. This is our chance to celebrate the amazing musical abilities of our children. It is always a marvellous opportunity to showcase these talents to our wider community, and regularly features performances from all age groups – sometimes even including our youngest children in Reception!
The Music subject leader is Mr James Osler and please contact the school if you have any questions about Music at Langley Fitz.