Music

Hello everyone, welcome to the Music page!

Hello and welcome to our Music page!

On here you'll find out all about what we're getting up to at St Stephen's Church of England Primary to showcase our musical talents! At St Stephen's, we use a Music scheme throughout school called Charanga. This is used as part of fantastic teacher knowledge and skills to provide an all inclusive and enriched Music programme, progressing through all levels of attainment.

What is our intention?

Our music curriculum intends to inspire creativity, self-expression and encourages our children on their musical journey, as well as giving them opportunities to connect with others- we strive to foster a life-long love of Music by exposing our children to diverse musical experience and igniting a passion for music. We aim to recognise the emotions, social and background of our children to ensure we deliver a bespoke curriculum that is centred all around each individual child as a musician. By listening and responding to different musical styles, finding their voices as singers and performers and as composer, all will enable our children to become confident and reflective musicians. Our music curriculum intends to inspire creativity, self-expression and encourages our children on their musical journey, as well as giving them opportunities to connect with others- we strive to foster a life-long love of Music by exposing our children to diverse musical experience and igniting a passion for music. We aim to recognise the emotions, social and background of our children to ensure we deliver a bespoke curriculum that is centred all around each individual child as a musician. By listening and responding to different musical styles, finding their voices as singers and performers and as composer, all will enable our children to become confident and reflective musicians.

The Benefits of Music

Music is not only something that can be loved and appreciated by everyone through enjoyment, but it also has lots of educational benefits, particularly for children. Please find a useful website link below and some extracts from this, which highlight just how beneficial Music can be in supporting a young person's academic progress.

-Children who study Music tend to have larger vocabularies

-Children in schools with an enriched Music programme scored higher in Mathematics and English

-Studying Music could have cognitive benefits similar to those evident in bilingual children and can support this

-Everyday listening skills are better in those children who have a more enriched Music programme

-Children with learning needs or dyslexia who may lose focus more easily, tend to benefit greatly from Music lessons

-Children with better Music pedagogy and experience tend to have better memory

https://www.nammfoundation.org/articles/2014-06-09/how-children-benefit-music-education-schools?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI7pL8wqOl7AIVlO3tCh22EgFLEAAYASAAEgLCO_D_BwE

Music in School!

How do we implement our intention?

Our children have at least a one hour slot of Music per week in their classes and we offer some extra-curricular activities throughout the year. We currently have a school choir who practise weekly, and a recorder club for children Year 1-3. We also have singing practise every Wednesday morning for everyone and singing/music at the heart of all of our daily worships. We also regularly use Music as a way to relax and find time to unwind! Every day after dinner time you will find us relaxing and unwinding to a piece of Music.

Below are some useful Music websites that children can access at home to develop their Musical skills, or to help relax. We use many of these resources in our school too. Teachers use the Charanga scheme as a foundation of teaching, but we have developed many resources and skills over the years to offer our children a much more bespoke curriculum. We regularly use BBC music projects to link with our topic learning, and we sing songs from 'My Muslim songs.org' each half term. We aim to reflect the lives of our learners in the wider world.

Music Link-

https://www.nycos.co.uk/learn/video-resources/ages-7-up/

https://muslimsongs.org/home

https://pbskids.org/games/music/

https://www.popuk.org/membership-songs

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/zwxhfg8

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/bring-the-noise/eyfs-early-years-music/zhm7wty

Extra-Curricular Clubs at SS

At St Stephen's we offer an extra-curricular Recorder/Instrument club all year round. Children from Year 1-3 have the opportunity to learn how to play the Recorder in classes as part of their normal yearly class teaching, however some students are selected to attend extra-curricular Recorder club too. If preferred, the children will opt to play the Glockenspiel instead. The children enjoy learning new songs and having extra time to play their instruments, they enjoy making videos and performing to others.

School Choir

Our wonderful choir join together weekly to practise singing a range of different songs. We practise songs which we sing regularly, and we always add new songs to our song bank whenever we are thinking about a new RE value each half term. We enjoy singing some Nasheed Choir songs too. We use this website for many of our Nasheed choir songs;

https://muslimsongs.org/home

Worship and Singing Practise

We use some fantastic songs as part of our worship in school. Along with producers of various collections that we use, we subscribe to an online source called Fischy.com. The songs have religious and moral content which the children love to sing. The children learn signs along with the songs to help them remember and enjoy the words. The Fischy Music leader Stephen Fischbacher came to school to lead a two day workshop teaching the children new songs which resulted in a performance for the parents. In addition to singing, we listen to a wide range of music on entry and exit to our Worship time with God. This may be quiet and reflective or lively and fun-loving. Each week, we practise our songs in singing practise.

You can visit the Fischy Music website and sample some of the songs using the link below:

https://www.fischy.com/

Pop UK

In 2019 we were delighted to be able to welcome back Pop UK! Children in all year groups were able to learn new songs, enjoying singing them and even recording them to make an album! The school was alive with music and the children really enjoyed this experience. Children were able to take part in afternoon and evening concerts, where they sang and performed their new music.

We are still singing some of our Pop UK songs now in 2024! Pop UK also offer a free song bank. We regularly use these songs in lessons, for worship, and for our school choir. You can find and listen to lots of their songs below;

https://www.popuk.org/membership-songs