Music

At Dallow Primary School, we provide an engaging music curriculum that we believe improves the life chances of every child and engenders a life-long passion for music. To ensure that no barrier to learning holds a child back, we hire a range of highly skilled peripatetic music teachers from the Luton Music Service. This means every child has the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, regardless of their background. It ensures that our children receive the very best music teaching, which focuses on technical understanding, developing skillful technique and building self-confidence. 

In music lessons, children learn to read and perform pieces of music, both as part of an ensemble and in the round. They learn about rhythm, pulse, melody, harmony, timbre and are encouraged to use technical terms such as octave, piano, forte, allegro, adagio and glissando. Children learn staff notation and begin to follow tablature notation. They explore different genres and periods of music, and study great composers such as Tchaikovsky, exploring how music and drama come together to form a narrative in ballet.

Music at Dallow has strong cross-curricular links with other subjects. In science, children learn and explore how sound is made by vibrations, how to alter pitch and volume and they apply this knowledge to design, make and evaluate their own musical instrument in Design and Technology. Music is an integral part of dance in PE, where it facilitates the children’s self expression, and provides an opportunity to build on their sense of pulse, rhythm and timing. In Year 4, Children have the opportunity to create and edit their own synthesised compositions using computer software in Computing lessons.

Our weekly singing assemblies provide a key opportunity for children to remember more from across the curriculum: The children practise their reading skills through decoding and comprehension of lyrics; they embed prior knowledge by singing songs about a variety of topics, such as the Romans; they build on PSHE subjects such as celebrating difference when singing songs from different cultures around the world; and they develop a strong sense of morality through singing songs with a moral message about unity, respect and tolerance. Moreover, these singing assemblies are important for student wellbeing, as they create a strong sense of community spirit, enable children to express themselves and to build their confidence in a fun and familiar setting.

Our whole-school Music of the Month exposes children to a range of carefully selected genres, musicians and composers which broadens their repertoire of music throughout history and around the world. We employ Music of the Month to enliven and invigorate the mind and body, or provide a calm atmosphere for focused individual work. 

We provide the opportunity for KS2 children to attend our popular weekly choir sessions, where children further develop their singing technique, consolidate their understanding of musical terms and expand their cultural capital by singing songs from a variety of genres and cultures, in a variety of languages. They gain self-confidence and life experience through attending the renowned Young Voices concert each year at the Birmingham Resorts World Arena, and bring joy to the local community by taking part in the Luton Singing Spectacular.

Please click here to follow the learning journey from YR - Y6 in Music

Please click here to see the progression grid for YR - Y6 in Music___