Music: Key Stage 1

Children learn to identify the difference between the pulse and rhythm of a song and consolidate their understanding of these concepts through listening and performing activities.

Use bodies and instruments to listen and respond to pieces of music with fast and slow speeds; learn and perform a rhyme and a song focussing on fast and slow.

Journey into the unknown and explore under the sea through music, movement, chanting and the playing of tuned percussion instruments.

Children make links between music, sounds and environments and use percussion, vocal and body sounds to represent calm or stormy seas.

Through fairy tales, children are introduced to the concept of timbre; learning that different sounds can represent characters and key moments in a story. They explore clapping along to the syllables of words and phrases before creating rhythmic patterns to tell a familiar fairy tale.

Learning how to identify high and low notes and to compose a simple tune, children investigate how tempo changes help tell a story and make music more exciting.

Children use their bodies and instruments to listen and respond to pieces of classical music that represent animals. They learn and perform a song as a class and compose a short section of music as a group, with a focus on dynamics and tempo.

Using instruments to represent animals, copying rhythms, learning a traditional Ghanaian call and response song and recognising simple notation, progressing to creating call and response rhythms.

Children are introduced to the instruments of the orchestra and practice identifying these within a piece of music. They learn how different characters can be represented by timbre, how emotions can be represented by pitch and how changes in tempo can convey action.

Children learn to sing the song ‘Once a Man Fell in a Well’ and to play it using tuned percussion. Using letter notation to write a melody.

Developing knowledge and understanding of dynamics, timbre, tempo and instruments. Learning to compose and play motifs.

Creating sounds to represent three contrasting landscapes: seaside, countryside and city.

Developing understanding of musical language and how timbre, dynamics and tempo affect the mood of a song.