MUSIC DEPARTMENT

MISSION STATEMENT

To ensure that music-making is accessible to all pupils, at all levels of musicianship within a rich and diverse learning environment.

AIMS

The Music Department aims primarily to:

• Deliver a lower school curriculum which is broad and balanced, whilst being relevant, accessible and worthwhile for all students.
• Reflect the aims of the National Curriculum requirements for Music.
• Promote music in the curriculum as an enjoyable and practical subject.
• To provide students with a sense of belonging, a strong sense of purpose and a sense of competence.
• To involve children regularly in music-making activities, including singing, instrumental performance and composing.
• To promote musical literacy in both lower and upper school work.
• To encourage students of all abilities to continue their musical studies beyond KS3 through provision of a GCSE course which allows for a wide differentiation range of students.
• Develop pupils' skills, experiences, historical and cultural awareness and knowledge of music from a wide variety of styles and cultures and to encourage a critical response to these music's.
• Cater for those students with advanced musical ability to continue their musical studies beyond KS4 both in, and in addition to, the formal curriculum.
• Provide an environment in which students with instrumental and vocal skills can continue their musical experiences outside - and in addition to- the formal curriculum through a rich and varied program of extra-curricular activities both liturgical and non-liturgical.
• Achieve excellence where at all possible with students involved in both curricular and extra curricular work and to encourage them to gain as much from their experiences as possible.
• To encourage pupils 'self-esteem and to develop a self-evaluating approach to the activities they are involved in.
• Present a program of study in all years which promotes equality of race, gender and social background.
• Involve appropriate elements of Information Technology within the delivery of the curriculum.
•  

STAFF

Gary Lewis (Head of Music)

Janet Hodgson (Class Music Teacher/ Peripatetic Liaison)

Mike Roberts (Music Technology)

Matt Waddell (Music Technician)

John Clarke (Brass)

Andrew Davey (Woodwind)

Neol Davies (Guitar)

Kirsty Holt (Cello)

David Jones (Percussion)

Eddie Jones (Violin)

Sarah Knight (Woodwind)

Alison Roper (French Horn)

FACILITIES

The Music department is based in Penrhos house and enjoys a good range of facilities.

The main teaching room is MU1 but the band room (PA1) also doubles as a music classroom. Both rooms have PA systems, drum-kits and a range of keyboards, amplifiers, acoustic and electric guitars, pitched and non-pitched percussion.

MU3 has recently been refurbished, housing a suite of networked MIDI/digital audio workstations linked to keyboards. These are used in lower and upper school lessons and run Cubase SX3 and Sibelius 4. MU5 houses a further 5 music workstations which currently run Logic Audio and Sibelius. Opposite MU5 is the Apple Mac room which runs Pro Tools on the Mac platform.

CURRICULUM

In the lower school a spiral curriculum has been adopted which touches upon and revisits essential building blocks of Music such as melody, harmony, rhythm, pulse, form, dynamics, texture, timbre, mood, style. The main areas of activity are Performing, Composing and Analytical Listening. Wherever possible, lower school lessons will involve some practical element such as playing in full-class band pieces, improvisation/composition work in groups of 5, rhythm-work, singing and song-writing. A wide range of musical styles are investigated and occasionally music technology is employed to aid the compositional process. In Year 8 pupils do a module on Music in Film and have the opportunity to create some music for a film-extract. By the end of year 9, pupils will have explored a range of world-music styles, have a reasonable understanding of how to create a melody and provide a chordal accompaniment and will have developed some confidence in performance and composition work. By this stage many of our pupils would be ready to take GCSE earlier than expected. Currently we have started a trend of entering pupils for GCSE music in year 10 (or where appropriate in year 9) and this system seems to work well.

The Edexcel GCSE Music syllabus is used.

Edexcel's GCSE Music syllabus consists of 3 papers; Performance, Composition and Listening & Appraising. Candidates are expected to have some skill on a musical instrument before starting the course, and keyboard skills are useful for composition using the music software.

Paper 1, Performance, is worth 30% of the marks and requires that candidates submit a piece of solo playing or singing, that they perform as part of an ensemble, and that they play or sing one of their compositions. The performances are assessed on difficulty, technical mastery and interpretation of the music.

Paper 2, Composition, is again worth 30% of the marks. Candidates must apply the knowledge of various musical genres gleaned in the Listening & Appraising part of the course, and compose two pieces which relate to two different Areas of Study. 

Paper 3, Listening & Appraising, is worth 40%. There are four Areas of Study, "Repetition and contrast in Western Classical Music 1600-1899", "New directions in Western Classical Music - 1900 to the present day", "Popular song in context" and "Rhythms, scales and modes in music from around the world". Within each of these Areas of Study they examine various genres in terms of their identifying features and their historical and social context.

A/S and A Level Music are taught following the Edexcel Syllabus

The three AS-Level modules are:

• Performing
• Developing Musical Ideas
• Listening and Understanding

For the full A-Level, the additional three modules are:

• Performing and Composing
• Analyzing Music
• Specialist Options (either a composition portfolio or a recital)

EXTRA CURRICULAR MUSIC

At Lawrence Sheriff pupils enjoy a healthy mix of extra curricular Music activity including the following:

Junior Orchestra (an opportunity for our less experienced musicians to learn valuable ensemble skill)

Senior Orchestra (a group which supports many charity fund-raising events and plays a range of styles from renaissance to film music)

Jazz Orchestra (maintaining a busy schedule of performance throughout the year)

Brass group

Wind ensemble

Chamber Groups (these perform at termly concerts and various regional and national music festivals)

Pit Orchestra (an ad hoc formation which provides musical accompaniment for local theatre groups and school theatre productions, most recently ‘Our Country’s Good’ (original score), ‘Bugsy Malone’ and ‘Little Shop of Horrors.’ In the pipeline at LSS  is ‘Return to the Forbidden Planet’.

Rock Bands (there are many of these often involved in charity fund-raising work)

Choir (we are currently looking for specialist vocal tutor to run this as a weekly activity)