It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

Plato

At Thrapston Primary, we deliver a high quality music education that will engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians. We do so to increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As pupils progress, we aim that they develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon. To ensure this, we have designed and implemented a curriculum in collaboration with the National Curriculum with support from Northamptonshire Music and Performing Arts Trust (NMPAT).  

Our curriculum ensures all pupils:

• 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.

From January 2025 our curriculum has centred around Sing Up (https://www.singup.org/), a music-based scheme which is designed to progressively develop children’s musical skills.

In KS1 children are taught to:

• Use their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes
• Play tuned and untuned instruments musically
• Listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high quality live and recorded music
• Experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the inter-related dimensions of music 

In KS2 children are taught to:

• Sing and play musically with increasing confidence and control
• Develop an understanding of musical composition, organising and manipulating ideas within musical structures and reproducing sounds from aural memory
• Play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and playing musical instruments with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression
• Improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the inter-related dimensions of music
• Listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory  
• Use and understand staff and other musical notations  
• Appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians  
• Develop an understanding of the history of music

The music skills taught in each year group are reinforced and built upon throughout the scheme. Children in Year 5 will participate in a Samba project which is delivered through NMPAT. To further expose children to a wealth of artists, instruments and songs/pieces of music, we have weekly assemblies where the children listen and appraise music within their key stages. In Key Stage 2, children are also given the opportunity to participate in a variety of music lessons such as Rocksteady band lessons and individual instrumental lessons (NMPAT). They are also invited to participate in a school choir, where they are given the opportunity to perform in the community throughout the year.