"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything." - Plato
Intent
At Junior Jam, we believe providing pupils with a rich and diverse music education is fundamental to helping to unlock their creative potential. Our music curriculum sets out to allow children a broad range of musical experiences within primary school, giving pupils the foundation to explore their talents and passions. Our course is designed to teach the whole music curriculum from Reception to Year 6. We do this by teaching three core subjects, Music Theory with Keyboards, Songwriting with Glockenspiels and Singing, which are delivered across three half terms throughout the year. The remaining three half terms within an academic year will be instrument focused in order to ensure pupils have the opportunity to perform on a variety of tuned and untuned instrumentation from a wide range of different cultures. Our equipment is rotated around our Junior Jam instructors throughout the country ensuring all our schools get a well-rounded mix of instrumentation.
Core Subjects
- Singing
- Music Theory with Keyboards
- Songwriting with Glockenspiels
Instrumentation Subjects
- Boomwhackers
- Electric Drums
- African Drums
- Ukuleles
- Class Jam
- Percussion
- Samba Drumming
- Keyboards
- Steel Pans
To ensure that the curriculum is progressive and differentiated from year group to year group, the three core subjects pupils will study are year group specific. We have written the lesson plans with this intent in mind and targeted the learning at that specific year group. When pupils commence one of our instrumentation courses, unless they have prior knowledge and experience of the instrument, they will begin by learning the basics of the instrument and will progress through the levels year by year.
Achieving our intent hinges upon seeing the same classes every week for a 45 minute to 1 hour session for a full academic year. We will show our intent through the use of progression maps and curriculum link documents that will evidence how each of our activities hit certain national curriculum points.
We do all of this in the hope that at the end of an academic year, pupils will have accessed a wide range of musical experiences and developed their musical understanding in order to continue their musical journey.
Implementation
We have created a full comprehensive curriculum that we implement across the academic year. As stated in our INTENT, we have created a curriculum that spans from Reception to Year 6. As this curriculum is conceptualised and written by Junior Jam, we have full control over how we teach the national curriculum and which year group learns what content. We provide the full framework of our content including concepts, knowledge, skills and objectives to our schools. As stated in our INTENT, our music curriculum is comprised of Core Subjects and Instrumentation Courses.
Our three core courses have been developed to contain the majority of curriculum links and foundational knowledge. These courses are year group specific and have been developed in accordance with both the national curriculum for music and the Model Music Curriculum (2021)
- Singing – Our singing courses are taught to all years from EYFS to Year 6. Through singing, pupils will learn about key elements such as pitch and dynamics as well focusing on their vocal health, breathing and posture. EYFS will have a greater focus on singing in order to access musical experiences without instrumentation.
- Music Theory with Keyboards – Music Theory with Keyboards is taught across six levels from Year 1 to Year 6. Pupils will explore the fundamentals of music using the keyboards to understand elements of musicianship such as melody, harmony and pulse.
- Songwriting with Glockenspiels – Songwriting with Glockenspiels gives pupils the opportunity to explore composition across KS1 and KS2. Within these courses, pupils will also focus on musical listening. Across all levels, pupils will complete a weekly listening time where they will critically listen to a variety of musical examples appropriate for their year group as set out in the Model Music Curriculum.
Through our instrumentation courses, pupils will be given opportunities to celebrate, share and experience musical development and consolidate their learning from our core courses. Pupils will learn about the history and cultural significance of the instruments they are playing and will be able to develop their aural skills. These courses allow pupils performance opportunities within the classroom in order to develop confidence not only within music but across their academic careers.
Impact
When pupils have completed each music course with Junior Jam, they will reflect on their learning and contextualise their knowledge. Our courses enable pupils to explore a broad range of musical elements and develop the tools they need to continue their musical journey in either a listening, composing or performance capacity.
At Junior Jam, we understand the importance of monitoring not just progression within music, but also achievement. There are a number of ways that we monitor your pupils’ progression and development which staff can access to evidence the success of our courses and these are comprehensible, thorough and deep dive compliant.
We measure and evidence the impact of our courses through the following methods:
- Verbal feedback throughout lessons and after performance opportunities
- Session Forms – These are weekly reports on whether the learning objective for the lesson was achieved which are accessible via your school portal.
- Course Evaluations – These are half-termly reports for each class, measuring how the class performs against a range of statements specific to the course, allowing our instructors to track how the class performs against national expectations.
- Reporting and Assessing – These are individual grades for each child covering attainment, behaviour and progression within the course which will be given should a school choose to opt into our Reporting and Assessing programme.
We also encourage school staff, whether this be class teachers or SLT, to view musical performances in class which will offer encouragement to pupils in their performance capabilities as well as understanding the class’s performance ability. We encourage video recording of these performances which you can then use as evidence for OFSTED. Unfortunately, due to GDPR, this is not something we can provide for you but we do, however, welcome and encourage your school staff to do this.
Knowledge Organisers
Hymns
'Wizard of Oz' Songs
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