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Music: Key Stage 3

NB: (Each KS3 class experiences termly equality of opportunity via being taught for half a
term in Room PA11 using music technology and half a term in Room PA12 using
traditional musical instruments & world music instruments.)

Year 7, 8 and 9 students study various musical genres, both historical and cultural, and through these different cultures and styles, explore, develop and refine their musical and technical skills. Each project focuses on one of the subject-specific skills and students return to these concepts throughout the Key Stage, enabling them to build and advance their knowledge and skill-set further as they progress through the school. Digital lesson plans containing several ‘Learning Episodes’, including extension tasks, are used by students in Music lessons so that each lesson has a clear structure, the interface being an electronic medium familiar to the wider student-culture. Electronic ‘Individual Learning Plans’ and ‘Student Voice’ questionnaires are employed at all Key Stages to aid evaluation and inform preparation and, work from higher year-groups is brought down to lower year-groups to help raise achievement when appropriate to do so.

In line with the National Curriculum all students have the opportunity to….

  • Perform, 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
  • Learn to sing and to use their voices, to create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, use technology appropriately and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence
  • Understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the inter-related dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.

Throughout the Key Stage 3 scheme of work all students will….

  • Play and perform confidently in a range of solo and ensemble contexts using their voice, playing instruments musically, fluently and with accuracy and expression.
  • Improvise and compose; and extend and develop musical ideas by drawing on a range of musical structures, styles, genres and traditions
  • Use staff and other relevant notations appropriately and accurately in a range of musical styles, genres and traditions
  • Identify and use the inter-related dimensions of music expressively and with increasing sophistication, including use of tonalities, different types of scales and other musical devices
  • Listen with increasing discrimination to a wide range of music from great composers and musicians
  • Develop a deepening understanding of the music that they perform and to which they listen, and its history.