Music
Welcome to the Music section of our website. At Checkendon CE (A) Primary School we believe in giving our children opportunities to explore the joy of music through singing, performing, creating and listening.
Whole School Music Activities: We enjoy a weekly ‘singing worship’ when we meet as a whole school to sing a wide variety of songs. Our annual Nativity and Key Stage Two productions also give a great opportunity for the children to sing and perform. We have strong links with St Peter and Pauls' Church and we take part in services there in which music plays a major role. The whole school, led by the choir enjoys services at Harvest, Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and Year 6 hold their leavers’ service there. We also enjoy an afternoon of performing in our annual Music Concert.
School Choir: Children in Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 are invited to join our school choir. All are welcome. There is no audition. We have regular performances throughout the year, encouraging singing at our Harvest, Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and end-of-year church services. We also entertain at our PTA' Santa's Grotto evening and annual Music Concert. The choir also join a number of other schools and perform at Dorchester Abbey in Oxfordshire's Festival of Voices.
Learning a Musical Instrument: Children in all year groups have the opportunity to learn a variety of instruments. We currently offer piano, violin, ukulele, guitar and flute through our talented Mrs Davies who provides all our music provision. Please see the office for further details.
Sing up Day
From the UK to the UAE and the US to China, schools and singers join us on Sing Up Day. A brand new Sing Up Day anthem is commissioned and we enjoy learning the song to perform globally!
2025 Sing Up Day https://youtu.be/Am5hfBRo178
2024 Sing Up Day https://youtu.be/5dCGVvmn4Kg
2023 Sing Up Day https://youtu.be/sH1Rk71Idzg
2023 Sing Up Day https://youtu.be/DWgKlWpK3Yc
2022 Sing Up Day https://youtu.be/UL5zuteg-oA
Music - our intent
We want all pupils to benefit from a music education which engages and inspires them to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians. Our curriculum provision will increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As pupils progress, we want them to develop a growing musical vocabulary that allows them to critically engage with music. Teaching and learning of music will be a reflective process for the children as they are given the opportunities to assess themselves and their peers. We intend that children will be confident in celebrating their musical success and skills with their peers and wider audiences through performances and recordings.
Music - our implementation
Checkendon School is a small primary school with big musical ambitions. Following the publication of the Model Music Curriculum in 2021 and the National Plan for Music Education in 2022 we have overhauled our music curriculum and provision and are constantly seeking ways to encourage all children to experience the joy of making music. We are committed to providing high quality, weekly whole class music lessons for all age groups from reception to year 6 to enable children to excel in individual and small group instrumental lessons and ensembles. We believe that the opportunity to participate in whole class recorder lessons would enrich the music making in our school and would provide every child with a valuable opportunity to learn an instrument and experience the many benefits of playing together. Small schools have very small budgets and do not receive any money for music provision. Many schools are being forced to remove music from the curriculum due to the lack of funding and there is a lot of media attention around this at the moment. Considering the context of the community we serve, by offering music lessons we are realising cultural capital through enhanced music provision. We will be exposing our children to a variety of subject areas, promoting character building qualities that lead to creating well-rounded, global citizens, and of course the more typical expectations of education – which are to provide children with recognised and meaningful opportunities to succeed. We believe that music enriches the lives of our pupils both individually and our wider school community. We were able to benefit from a grant from the SRP Walter Bergmann Fund that helped us to keep music alive in our community by enabling us to purchase a class set of recorders. That followed a successful grant application with NAPE (Oxford) for Djembe Drums.
Music - our impact
Music and singing are integral to the life of Checkendon. The children relish opportunities to create, play, perform and enjoy music, develop skills, appreciate a wide variety of musical forms, and begin to judge the quality of music. Through our music curriculum pupils gain enjoyment, self-confidence and a sense of achievement through musical activities. They acquire musical skills, knowledge and understanding of musical concepts through primarily active listening then performing and composing.
Listening to music
We listen to a wide range of music throughout the year, including western classical music, popular music and traditional music from around the world. We particularly enjoy Ten Pieces from the BBC.
Some music form our listening programme is shown:
