Music at Whitelands Academy intends to provide students with a broad understanding of the theoretical, practical and technological knowledge and skills to be able to further develop their interests and musical capabilities outside of school. The curriculum intends to capture the interests of students through providing an experience of a wide range of music genre allowing each child to appreciate where their interests fit into the world of music and how they could contribute to it.
Our curriculum is academic and ambitious:
At Whitelands Academy the music curriculum is academic and ambitious for all students. The sequence of theoretical knowledge is designed to deepen students understanding of the practical skills taught. Students are taught how to read music, analyse it and understand what they are listening to in order to be able to put this knowledge into practice by both composing and performing their own music.
Our curriculum is broad and enriching:
At Whitelands Academy, the curriculum extends beyond the National curriculum by offering them the widest range of music genres; from classical to modern pop rock. Students are introduced to modern technology that is used by song writers so that they understand how music can be developed in the modern world.
Outside of lessons, students are encouraged to participate in the school choir, school productions and take music lessons.
Our curriculum promotes core literacy and is knowledge rich:
In music, tier 3 vocabulary is taught explicitly using dual coding. Students are taught what the definitions to these words are as well as being able to utilise these words when analysing music and composing their own.
With the Music curriculum being academically challenging, students are supported in retaining and retrieving what has been learnt into their long-term memory by utilising knowledge organisers, DNAs and home learning quizzes. This revisits previous learning repetitively using increased time intervals in between repeats.
Our curriculum is values-based:
Throughout the music lessons, students discuss the importance of OuR TRAIT values at Whitelands Academy. Whether this is being respectful and tolerant of other student’s musical genre interests, or being respectful of other student’s musical performance or being resilient and ambitious in their own creativities.