Music

The teaching of Music at Manadon Vale follows the National Curriculum, delivered predominantly through the Charanga Scheme. This scheme has been adapted to a bespoke Manadon version and is supplemented with additional practical activities, particularly topic-based composition opportunities. Embedded in Manadon’s Music Unit Map is a carefully designed and challenging progressive plan of the various musical skills and strands, to ensure that children are constantly developing and improving as musicians throughout their Manadon journey. 

At Manadon, children gain their love of music and skills from inclusive participation in fun, engaging and practical activities. They sing, play instruments, perform, improvise, compose, notate, listen and appraise, continuously increasing their musical vocabulary and enjoying music with a range of history, culture and style. They progressively learn about the inter-related strands of pulse, rhythm and duration, pitch, dynamics, tempo, timbre, structure, texture and notation, linking and combining their learning in these strands when they compose.

Children at Manadon enjoy a well-resourced music room – they play a wide range of quality tuned and untuned percussion instruments. We are a ‘Singing School’ where everyone sings regularly, to further extend our musical skills and understanding, but also to have fun and bring our community together. 

The inspiration from quality music curriculum provision results in many children also choosing to learn an instrument in small peripatetic groups and every Year 3 class learns the violin. Large numbers of children also choose to commit to the extra-curricular choirs and orchestra. We love to perform at larger scale events, at school, in our local community and nationally! 

At Manadon Vale, we are all musicians!