Music At Thomas Jolyffe

'The true beauty of music is that it connects people. It carries a message, and we, the musicians, are the messengers.'

Roy Ayers

Vision and Aims

Music is a universal language and something which everyone should be able to enjoy and experience. At Thomas Jolyffe, we aim to provide children with a high-quality music education which engages and inspires them to develop a love of music and their own skills as musicians. Our vision is to equip children with the skills needed in order for them to appreciate and appraise music, compose, improvise and perform confidently. Our curriculum introduces children to a broad and varied range of music from across the world and generations, developing their ability to discuss and play music from cultures and traditions different to their own in a considered and respectful way.

Throughout their school experience children will develop their understanding of the eight interrelated dimensions of music (tempo, timbre, texture, dynamics, structure, notation, pitch and duration) enabling them to discuss music and create compositions using these. Children will learn to play along with songs using instruments, compose their own melodies and experiment with different ways of notating them.  

Curriculum

To teach music at Thomas Jolyffe, we use the music scheme ‘Charanga’. Key skills are revisited and built upon across year groups to help children embed and develop them in a ‘spiral curriculum’. As children progress through the school, they will be working on similar objectives but at increasing degrees of complexity.

 Each lesson consists of a similar structure:

1. Listen and appraise - in which children will explore different styles of music and discuss similarities and differences between them.
2. Musical activities (including warm-up games, singing, playing, improvising and composing)
3. Performing/sharing - These can include filmed performance which the children would watch back to improve their next performance.

The documents below outline the curriculum objectives children will cover in their respective year groups as well as the progression of skills from years 1 – 6, known as a ‘skills ladder’:

Mr N Musk

Music Leader