Music

"Music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable" - Leonard Bernstein, American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian

Intent
The National Curriculum for music aims to ensure that all children:

perform, listen to, review and evaluate music
be taught to sing, create and compose music
understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated

At Peel Common, children gain a good understanding of what music is through listening, singing, playing, evaluating, analysing, and composing across a variety of historical periods, styles, traditions, and musical genres. We are committed to developing a curiosity for the subject, as well as an understanding and acceptance of the validity and importance of all types of music, and an unbiased respect for the role that music may wish to be expressed in any person’s life. We are committed to ensuring children understand the value and importance of music in the wider community and are able to use their musical skills, knowledge, and experiences to involve themselves in music, in a variety of different contexts.

Implementation
The music curriculum ensures children sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate. This is embedded in the classroom where children have a weekly lesson taught by a Hampshire peripatetic teacher in Years 3/4 focusing on a different instrument each term, and through the structured music programme Kapow in Years 5/6 taught by a teacher as well as the weekly whole school learning and performing a song. Class assemblies, PCJ performs, and the end of year show are also extra opportunities for music to be explored and performed. The elements of music are taught in the classroom lessons so that children are able to use some of the language of music to dissect it, and understand how it is made, played, appreciated and analysed. In the classroom children learn key aspects of music through cross-curricular links. They also learn how to compose, focusing on different dimensions of music, which in turn feeds their understanding when listening, playing, or analysing music. Composing or performing using body percussion and vocal sounds is also part of the curriculum, which develops the understanding of musical elements without the added complexity of an instrument.

Impact
Whilst in school, children have access to a varied programme, which allows them to discover areas of strength, as well as areas they might like to improve upon. The integral nature of music and the learner creates an enormously rich palette from which a child may access fundamental abilities such as: achievement, self-confidence, interaction with and awareness of others, and self-reflection. Music will also develop an understanding of culture and history, both in relation to children individually, as well as ethnicities from across the world. Children are able to enjoy music in as many ways as they choose – either as listener, creator or performer. They can dissect music and comprehend its parts. They can sing and feel a pulse. They have an understanding of how to further develop skills less known to them, should they ever develop an interest in their lives.

"I see music as fluid architecture.” Joni Mitchell, Canadian singer-songwriter and artist

Curriculum Overview 2025 - 2026

Music Year Group Curriculum Overview 2025/2026

Autumn 1 Autumn 2 Spring 1 Spring 2 Summer 1 Summer 2

EYFS

Hazel Class

Exploring Sound

Exploring how to use our voice and bodies to make sounds, experimenting with tempo and dynamic when playing instruments and identifying sounds in the environment.

Celebration Music

Learning about the music from a range of cultural and religious celebrations, including Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Christmas.

Musical Stories

A unit based on traditional children’s tales and songs, where pupils learn that music and instruments can be used to convey moods or represent characters.

Transport

Using their voices, bodies and instruments to explore different types of transport, identify and mimic transport sounds and interpret and perform a simple score.

Music and Movement

Creating simple actions to songs, learning how to move to a beat and expressing feelings and emotions through movement to music.

Big Band

Learning about the four different groups of musical instruments, following a beat using an untuned instrument and performing a practised song to a small audience.

Year 1

Cherry Tree

Keeping the pulse

(My Favourite Things)

In this unit, children explore keeping the pulse together through music and movement, by exploring their favourite things.

Christmas songs and performance

Sound Patterns

(Fairytales)

This unit uses fairytales to introduce children to the concept of sound patterns (rhythms). They explore clapping along to repeated words and phrases, creating rhythmic patterns to tell a familiar fairytale.

Dynamics

(Seaside)

In this unit, children make links between music, sounds and environments and use percussion, vocal and body sounds to represent the seaside.

Pitch

(Superhereos)

This unit helps the children learn to identify high and low notes and to compose a simple tune to represent a superhero.

Musical Symbols

(Under the sea)

In this unit, the children combine all the musical concepts learned throughout Year 1 for an underwater-themed performance incorporating instrumental, vocal and body sounds.

Year 2

Oak Class

Call and response

(Animals)

In this unit, the children use instruments to represent animals, copying rhythms and creating call and response rhythms.

Christmas songs and performance

Contrasting dynamics

(Space)

This unit helps children with developing knowledge and understanding of dynamics using instruments; learning to compose and play rhythms to represent planets.

Singing

(On this island)

In this unit, the children learn folk songs and create sounds to represent three contrasting landscapes: seaside, countryside and city.

Structure

(Myths and legends)

This lesson helps the children develop an understanding of structure by exploring and ordering rhythms.

Pitch

(Musical me)

In this unit, children are exploring the song ‘Once a Man Fell in a Well’, playing it using tuned percussion and reading simple symbols representing pitch.

Year 3

Silver Birch Class

Ballads

Children learn what ballads are, how to identify their features and how to convey different emotions when performing them. Using an animation as inspiration, children carefully select vocabulary to describe the story, before turning them into lyrics by incorporating rhyming words and following the structure of a traditional ballad.

Creating compositions

(Mountains)

Learning to tell stories through music. Listening to music and considering the narrative it could represent. Paying close attention to the dynamics, pitch and tempo and how they change. Creating original compositions to match an animation, building up layers of texture.

Developing singing technique

(The Vikings)

The children develop their singing technique. Learning to keep in time and work on musical notation and rhythm, the unit finishes with a group performance of a song with actions.

Pentatonic melodies and composition

(Chinese New Year)

Revising key musical terminology, playing and creating pentatonic melodies, composing a piece of music using layered melodies.

Jazz

Learning about ragtime style music, traditional jazz and scat singing. Children create a jazz motif using a swung rhythm.

Traditional instruments and improvisation

(India)

Children listen to a range of rag and tal music, identifying traditional instruments as well as creating their own improvisations and performing as a class.

Year 4

Sycamore Class

Body and tuned percussion

(Rainforests)

A topic of discovery; children will explore the rainforest through music and be introduced to new musical terms. They will also use a mixture of body percussion and tuned percussion instruments as the children create their own rhythms of the rainforest, layer by layer.

Changes in pitch, tempo and dynamics

(Rivers)

Learning to listen to changes in pitch, tempo and dynamics and relate it to something tangible and familiar. Linking to their geography learning, the pupils represent different stages of the river through vocal and percussive ostinatos, culminating in a final group performance.

Adapting and transposing motifs

(Romans)

Drawing upon their understanding of repeating patterns in music, pupils are introduced to the concept of motifs.

Haiku, music and performance

(Hanami Festival)

This Japanese inspired topic looks at the springtime festival of Hanami, which celebrates the fleeting beauty of spring flowers. Children use descriptive vocabulary to create a Haiku, put it to music and finally add percussion sound effects to bring all elements together before a final, group performance.

Samba and carnival sounds and instruments

(South America)

Getting a feel for the music and culture of South America, children are introduced to samba and the sights and sounds of the carnival.

Rock and roll

Learning about the origin and features of rock and roll music, pupils learn how to play the Hand Jive and Rock Around the Clock, looking specifically at a walking bass line, before performing a piece as a class.

Year 5

Maple Class

Composition and notation

(Musical Theatre)

Children learn how singing, acting, and dancing combine to create an overall performance.

Christmas songs and performance

Blues

Children are introduced to this famous genre of music and its history, and learn to identify the key features and mood of Blues music and its importance and purpose. They also get to grips with the 12-bar Blues and the Blues scale, and combine these to create an improvised piece with a familiar, repetitive backing.

Composition to represent the festival of colour

(Holi Festival)

Exploring the associations between music, sounds and colour; composing and performing their own musical composition to represent Holi, the Hindu festival of colour that celebrates the beginning of spring and the triumph over good and evil.

South and West Africa

Children learn ‘Shosholoza’, a traditional South African song, play the accompanying chords using tuned percussion and learn to play the djembe. They will also learn a traditional West African drum and add some dance moves ready to perform the song in its entirety.

Looping and remixing

In this engaging topic, children learn about how dance music is created, focusing particularly on the use of loops.

Year 6

Hawthorn Class

Baroque

Exploring the music and composers of the Baroque Period and investigating the structural and stylistic features of their work.

Christmas songs and performance

Theme and variations

(Pop art)

Children explore the musical concept of theme and variations and discover how rhythms can ‘translate’ onto different instruments.

Dynamics, pitch and texture

(Coast – Fingal’s cave)

Appraising the work of Mendelssohn and further developing improvisation and composition skills.

Film music

Exploring and identifying the characteristics of film music. Creating a composition and graphic score to perform alongside a film.

Composing and performing a leavers song

Children spend the topic creating their very own leavers’ song personal to their experiences as a class.