Music
Subject intent
Our music curriculum is designed to be captivating and inclusive. It enables all pupils to develop confidence and resilience through performance, composition and active listening. As musicians as well as teachers, we will encourage children to value and develop their own creative identities through expressing themselves and communicating with others. Our aim is that they will leave school having built an inherent appreciation, understanding and life-long love of music.
Link to KS4 specification
Curriculum plan
| Year 7 | Year 8 | Year 9 | Year 10 | Year 11 | |
| How do we capture the spirit of carnival? Note values, bars, pulse, beat, repetition, ostinato, time signatures 4/4, 3/4, call and response, conducting | How has music narrated the struggle for equality? Improvisation, blues scale, accidentals, primary chords (I, IV, V 12 bar blues Syncopation and triplets | How can music tell my story? Lyric writing to a beat, using building blocks of rhythm and drums in a song, syncopated melodic and harmonic rhythm (repeated basslines / repeated chord patterns) | Component 1 Prep Looking at musical genres and music theory. Sonic features Compositional features | Component 2 Assessment Two pathways – performance, composition or production. | |
| What makes a great composer? Instruments of the orchestra. Staff notation, treble clef, what is a chord? melody, shape. Playing melodies with different rhythms | Shaping my musical toolbox Arranging with chords, secondary chords (II, III, VI), bass clef, intervals – tones and semitones + degrees of the scale Texture used in arrangement (moving together/ separately – homophonic / polyphonic / canon) | Bringing moving image to life Leitmotif, pedal note, introduction to tonality, dissonance, consonance, chromaticism, cluster chords, disjunct, conjunct, scalic melody Sforzando, instrumental choices for screen genres, synthesisers, further music technology skills | Component 1 Assessment | ||
| Component 3 | |||||
| Glastonbury Instrumental families, texture (layers), expression (crescendo, diminuendo, forte, piano), structure (verse / chorus) Notation (TAB, lead sheets), harmony (major minor chords) | Glastonbury 2 Further texture (monophonic, melody and accompaniment), articulation and playing techniques (strumming, plucked, staccato, legato, arco, pizzicato) | Live Lounge Techniques to put expression into performance, interpretation, cover / remix, acoustic / electric, structure (middle 8 / bridge / C section) Arranging with chords, secondary chords (II, III, VI), bass clef, intervals – tones and semitones + degrees of the scale | Component 2 Prep: Looking at performance and composition pathways Goal setting Skills audits Reviews | ||
