At Moon’s Moat our vision is for children to develop a lifelong love of music and performing arts. Music is a universal language and a unique form of creativity. We feel that music is an important tool for building good mental health and well-being. We want to share with our pupils how music can inspire, motivate, energise, calm and spiritually move us and enrich our lives. We want all children to experience the sense of collaboration, confidence and achievement that making music together can create. We provide extra-curricular musical opportunities such as our KS2 choir that performs at several community events throughout the year, as well as instrumental lessons in collaboration with Severn Arts.

The aims of Music at our school are:

• To foster a lifelong enjoyment of music  
• To develop skills in listening to, appreciating and evaluating music from a range of historical periods, cultural settings, genres, styles and traditions 
• To perform together using their voices and instruments and to enable children to build confidence when performing to an audience
• To develop knowledge about significant composers and musicians and some understanding of their historical chronology and geographical locations
• To explore the inter-related dimensions of music and compose their own pieces
• To develop skills in appraising their own and others' work
• To develop musical vocabulary to enable children to talk about music they hear 
• To provide opportunities to learn a musical instrument
• To begin to understand how music can be written down graphically

At Moon's Moat, Music is taught through a curriculum based on the inter-related dimensions of music, or elements as they're otherwise known (pitch, tempo, texture, duration, structure, timbre, beat). This enables pupils to build on prior learning by revisiting key concepts frequently.  Events in the calendar such as Harvest and Christmas provide valuable opportunities for whole school singing and performing together. From the moment children begin in our Nursery, music is an important part of daily life and singing helps children to learn new vocabulary, understand rhythm and rhyme, counting, sequencing and many other transferrable skills. This prepares children for more formal teaching of music as a discrete subject as they move into Year One.

By the time children leave us at the end of Year Four, they have developed confidence in singing, playing and performing together. They can use correct musical vocabulary to describe music they hear and the emotional effect it has upon them. They can express their preferences about music they choose to listen to and can become more critically engaged with the arts. They have experienced playing a musical instrument with others which develops self-discipline, perseverance and a sense of being part of something bigger than themselves. Children can represent music graphically and this prepares them well for formal notation as they progress through the rest of Key Stage Two. Extra-curricular music is strong at the school with a popular and well-attended choir that meets weekly. We are often invited to perform in the community and this gives children a real sense of achievement and sense of self-worth. 

Click here to see how music is taught in the Foundation Stage.

Click here to read our music policy.

Click to here to view our Progression of Knowledge and Skills in music at Moon’s Moat First School.