A Musical Learning Journey

At St John’s School in Jersey we are passionate about ensuring that we deliver a varied and broad curriculum that is enriching and enabling our children to become the best they can be. At the heart of our values, is the creative curriculum and we are always ensuring that we are constantly reflecting on our practice to provide the best opportunities we can offer.

As a school we had prioritised music development. As Music Coordinator, I contacted the Music Development team at Jersey Music Service, who came to visit, reviewed our school and together we were able to identify the ways forward specific to our vision and core values.

We have an incredibly supportive and talented team of Teachers and support staff, who will always give things a go (including learning instruments.) Music has always been delivered, however after speaking with staff; I found out that they wanted a consistent resource to deliver the curriculum. Jersey Music Service funded the Charanga music scheme, which enabled the children to have progression of skills throughout the school and the teachers to have a scheme that was easy to use.

As a musician, I know the value and benefits in learning an instrument. I knew this was an area that I wanted to make accessible to as many children as possible.

I looked at the curriculum for Early Years, Key Stage 1 and 2, and identified instruments that would complement the skills the children have to learn.

Our Foundation Stage and Nursery are using percussion. Our Key Stage 1 children are accessing the pBuzz. Year 3 are learning the recorder. Year 4 are learning the Ukulele. Years 5 and 6 are learning the keyboard.

In Upper Key Stage 2 I felt the continuity of one instrument was important to allow the focus to move from learning the instrument to creating music. I felt that this would ensure that the children are developing a variety of skills, an awareness of different instruments and hopefully making choices on taking up an instrument through the Jersey Music Service. We wouldn’t have been able to fund all the instruments if it wasn’t for our amazing Parent Teacher Association, who kindly funded them all.

We already had a school choir which is headed by another talented member of our team; Helen Fairhead. She had provided lots of community opportunities for the choir to perform. As a flautist, I organised a small flute group and we supported the choir with their performances. However, there was still a gap for the other instrumentalists in school.

I was keen to ensure that pupils have an opportunity to use their new instrumental skills. With help from Jersey Music Service we were able to set up our first School Orchestra. They provided us with a variety of music encompassing all the different (some not traditional orchestral) instruments learnt throughout the school. We made copies of the music available for the Peripatetic Staff to ensure that if children were finding the music challenging that they could benefit from additional help with the experts!

After lots of practice we were able to showcase our learning in our first summer concert along with our Choir, Flute, and Jersey Sings groups. After speaking with parents regarding the concert they felt that providing their children with opportunities to perform boosted their confidence and desire to aspire with their instruments.

As part of my other role with the Creative Curriculum, I was able to design a whole school focus to enable the children to have high quality performances and participate in a variety of activities led by music experts. We decided to fit in with the whole school focus on global citizenship, by having a variety of learning experiences linked to the particular country, that each class were focusing on. We had Samba drumming workshops, Capoeira, carnivals, local bands performing and teaching Jèrriais (Jersey French), instrument making, body percussion workshops for the younger children and much more.

There was a real buzz throughout the school, children were talking about Music and their experiences - the profile of Music was raised.

We are extremely thankful for all the support we have had on our Musical Journey. Even though it has sometimes been a little bumpy, we strive to ensure that we can make things as tuneful as they can be!

@PrimaryMusicMag