At St Michael’s CE (VC) First School, we believe that music education plays a vital role in providing children with a balanced education. Music not only enhances language and maths skills, memory and attention and social skills but can provide children with opportunities to discover new talents and foster a love of the arts.
Throughout our school, we follow the Charanga Creative Music Scheme (www.charanga.com) which is in line with ‘The power of music to change lives: a national plan for music education’ document:
‘The national plan for music education sets out the government’s vision to enable all children and young people in England to:
– learn to sing, play an instrument and create music together
– have the opportunity to progress their musical interests and talents, including professionally’ (DFE Website June 2022)
It is a spiral curriculum where musical concepts and language are revisited multiple times throughout a child’s learning journey at our school, introducing new topics and then further building deeper layers of understanding. Nursery and Early Years build in lesson ideas and resources from the Charanga website to compliment the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) curriculum.
Every week in Year 3, a peripatetic music teacher, from Entrust Music Service Staffordshire, teaches the children how to play glockenspiels. This is continued in Year 4 by class teachers who also teach the recorder.