Maths
At New Brighton Primary School, we are proud of the opportunities that we provide for our children to discover and develop not only their skills, but also their passion for music. In line with our school mission statement, our music curriculum allows children to grow in confidence as they master new techniques and gives them the chance to become resilient performers in a variety of situations.
Music lessons encourage children to perform as individuals and also as part of an ensemble, helping them to further understand the importance of mutual respect and giving them time together to share their ideas and opinions. We encourage our pupils to sing, compose and use percussion instruments in order to develop their creative skills. Visiting musicians help to further inspire our pupils, introducing them to exciting styles and genres of music that they may not have experienced before.
Music is taught in a practical and musical way. We feel it is important to keep all music lessons ‘musical’ even when teaching about the theory of music. Children will gain new knowledge and build on prior knowledge and practise and refine skills in their lessons, as we believe the basic skills of music such as rhythm, for example, although covered in year 1 is never mastered and left behind.
In our school, we follow a scheme of work called ‘Charanga’ which supports the teaching and learning of music across all key stages. The curriculum ensures that music lessons cover the elements of music, notation, sequencing and composing, listening and response and performance. Lessons allow students to sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate. The elements of music are taught in the classroom lessons so that children are able to use musical language when appraising different pieces of music. They also learn how to compose focussing on different dimensions of music, including pitch, duration and dynamics, considering this when they are playing instruments or using their voice.
Maths Curriculum Intent
As a maths team we have realised the importance of the CPA (concrete-pictorial-abstract) approach as we find it provides small building blocks to allow our children to deepen their understanding. Where appropriate, every year group in our school should have to access to concrete materials as a scaffold to their learning.
We follow the White Rose scheme of learning to ensure consistent coverage of each strand in every year, and this is supplemented by a variety of enhancement materials from other sources to effectively embed learning. We also find that the scheme gives us clear progression across the curriculum. It gives our teachers more opportunity to look outside their year group and understand where their year group fits in to the bigger picture.
As a maths team, we want our children to be fluent in mathematics. A rich diet of fluency, reasoning and problem solving offers every child the opportunity to master the maths curriculum and apply their knowledge and skills in real contexts.
Our school owl awards are regularly linked to maths lessons where children encouraged to be resilient, independent and confident in their learning.
