CURRICULUM > MUSIC

Music is recognised as an incredibly important part of the curriculum here at St Mary Abbots and is taught to all classes by a specialist music teacher.

The music curriculum ensures all pupils:
  • learn to sing and to use their voices.  At KS1 the children enjoy learning simple songs, chants and games and learn to recognise simple pitch differences.  At KS2 the children sing more challenging songs, often in canon or two parts, with expression and control and they develop their understanding of pitch .  All children in Years 5 and 6 join the school’s Church Choir and perform at the weekly school Eucharist.

  • listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians.  We listen to a lot of music!  We discuss what we can hear, whether we like it, and what we can compare it to.  We become familiar with the inter-related dimensions of music (pitch, dynamics, tempo, texture, timbre, duration, structure) and learn how to recognise their effect on the sounds we want to create.

  • perform.  There are many opportunities for children to perform throughout the school year.  Children perform to each other in music lessons, to other classes in assemblies, to the whole school in our Church services, and to the wider public at the Royal Albert Hall, the Cadogan Hall, Kensington Palace, Westfield, the Town Hall of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

  • create and compose music on their own and with others.  The children enjoy a range of composition topics through their school career, from soundscapes to hip hop, from space music to rhythmic patterns.  We have a range of tuned and untuned instruments the children use in their compositions.
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  • have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument.  In Year 3 the class learns the recorder and they use our class set of xylophones and keyboards for composition and performance work.  In addition, the children are encouraged to learn violin or trumpet through our peripatetic teachers.
 
In addition to our Church Choir, Years 4, 5 and 6 can join our Chamber Choir.  This choir rehearses every Monday lunchtime and regularly performs in school assemblies,  in Church and at events in our neighbourhood.