Hearing and Listening

• Matches music to pictures/visual resources.
• Describes the sound of instruments e.g. scratchy sound, soft sound.
• Creates visual representation of sounds, instruments and pieces of music, e.g. mark making to specific sounds or pieces of music

Vocalising and Singing

• Creates his or her own songs, often with a real sense of structure, e.g. a beginning and an end.
• Can often sing an entire song; songs could be nursery rhymes, pop songs, songs from TV programmes, songs from home.
• Merges elements of familiar songs with improvised singing.
• Creates sounds in vocal sound games.
• Changes some or all of the words of a song.
• Has strong preferences for songs he or she likes to sing and/or listen to.

Moving and Dancing

• Claps or taps to the pulse of the music he or she is listening to.
• Claps or taps to the pulse of the song he or she is singing.
• Physically interprets the sound of instruments, e.g. tiptoes to the sound of a xylophone.
• Physically imitates the actions of musicians, e.g. pretends to play the trumpet, piano, guitar.

Exploring and Playing

• Adds sound effects to stories using instruments.
• Leads or is led by other children in their music making, i.e. being a conductor.
• Listens and responds to others in pair/group music making.
• Operates equipment such as CD players, MP3 players, handheld devices, keyboards.
• Plays instruments with control to play loud/ quiet, (dynamics), fast/slow (tempo).
• Shows control to hold and play instruments to produce a musical sound, e.g. holding a triangle in the air by the string with one hand and playing it with a beater with the other.

Hearing and Listening

• Thinks abstractly about music and expresses this physically or verbally e.g. “This music sounds like floating on a boat.” “This music sounds like dinosaurs.”
• Distinguishes and describes changes in music and compares pieces of music, e.g. “this music started fast and then became slow.” “This music had lots of instruments but this music only had voices.” “This music was spiky and this music was smooth.”
• Associates genres of music with characters and stories.
• Accurately anticipates changes in music, e.g. when music is going to get faster, louder, slower

Vocalising and Singing

• Pitch matches, i.e. reproduces with his or her voice the pitch of a tone sung by another.
• Able to sing the melodic shape (moving melody, e.g. up and down, down & up) of familiar songs.
• Sings entire songs.
• May enjoy performing, solo and or in groups.
• Internalises music, e.g. sings songs inside his or her head.

Moving and Dancing

• Moves to the sound of instruments, e.g. walks, jumps, hops to the sound of a beating drum.
• Combines moving, singing and playing instruments, e.g. marching, tapping a drum whilst singing.
• Moves in time to the pulse of the music being listened to and physically responds to changes in the music, e.g. jumps in response to loud/sudden changes in the music.
• Replicates familiar choreographed dances e.g. imitates dance and movements associated with pop songs.
• Choreographs his or her own dances to familiar music, individually, in pairs/small groups.

Exploring and Playing

• Creates music based on a theme e.g. creates the sounds of the seaside.
• Finds and records sounds using recording devices.
• Plays instruments (including imaginary ones such as air guitar) to match the structure of the music, e.g. playing quietly with quiet parts within music, stopping with the music when it stops.
• Keeps a steady beat whilst playing instruments – his or her own steady beat in his or her creative music making.
• Taps rhythms to accompany words, e.g. tapping the syllables of names/objects/ animals/lyrics of a song.
• Creates rhythms using instruments and body percussion.
• May play along to the beat of the song they are singing or music being listened to.
• May play along with the rhythm in music, e.g. may play along with the lyrics in songs they are singing or listening to

Singing

• Sing simple songs, chants and rhymes from memory, singing collectively and at the same pitch, responding to simple visual directions (e.g. stop, start, loud, quiet) and counting in.
• Begin with simple songs with a very small range (mi-so), and then slightly wider. Include pentatonic songs.
• Sing a wide range of call and response songs, to control vocal pitch and to match the pitch they hear with accuracy

Listening

• Listen to recorded performances of music from a variety of cultures, time periods and traditions.
• Experience live music making in and out of school.
• Talk about and begin to understand the stories, origins, traditions, history and social context of the music they are listening to, singing and playing.

Composing

• Improvise simple vocal chants, using question and answer phrases.
• Create musical sound effects and short sequences of sounds in response to stimuli, e.g. a rainstorm or a train journey. Combine to make a story, choosing and playing classroom instruments (e.g. rainmaker) or sound-makers (e.g. rustling leaves).
• Understand the difference between creating a rhythm pattern and a pitch pattern.
• Invent, retain and recall rhythm and pitch patterns and perform these for others, taking turns.
• Use music technology, if available, to capture, change and combine sounds.
• Recognise how graphic notation can represent created sounds. Explore and invent own symbols.

Musicianship

Pulse/Beat

• Understand that the speed of the beat can change, creating a faster or slower pace (tempo).
• Mark the beat of a listening piece by tapping or clapping and recognising tempo as well as changes in tempo.
• Walk in time to the beat of a piece of music or song. Know the difference between left and right to support coordination and shared movement with others.
• Begin to group beats in twos and threes by tapping knees on the first (strongest) beat and clapping the remaining beats.
• Identify the beat groupings in familiar music that they sing regularly and listen to.

Rhythm

• Play copycat rhythms, copying a leader, and invent rhythms for others to copy on untuned percussion.
• Create rhythms using word phrases as a starting point (e.g. Hel-lo Si-mon or Can you come and play?).
• Read and respond to chanted rhythm patterns, and represent them with stick notation including crotchets, quavers and crotchets rests.
• Create and perform their own chanted rhythm patterns with the same stick notation.

Pitch

• Play a range of singing games based on the cuckoo interval (so-mi) matching voices accurately, supported by a leader playing the melody. The melody could be played on a piano, acoustic instrument or backing track.
• Sing short phrases independently within a singing game or short song.
• Respond independently to pitch changes heard in short melodic phrases, indicating with actions (e.g. stand up/sit down, hands high/hands low).
• Recognise dot notation and match it to 3-note tunes played on tuned percussion.

Singing

• Sing songs regularly with a pitch range of do-so with increasing vocal control.
• Sing songs with a small pitch range (e.g. Rain, Rain Go Away), pitching accurately.
• Know the meaning of dynamics (loud/quiet) and tempo (fast/slow) and be able to demonstrate these when singing by responding to:
• (a) the leader's directions and
• (b) visual symbols (e.g. crescendo, decrescendo, pause)

Listening

• Listen to recorded performances of music from a variety of cultures, time periods and traditions.
• Experience live music making in and out of school.
• Talk about and begin to understand the stories, origins, traditions, history and social context of the music they are listening to, singing and playing.

Composing

• Create music in response to a non-musical stimulus (e.g. a storm, a car race, or a rocket launch).
• Work with a partner to improvise simple question and answer phrases, to be sung and played on untuned percussion, creating a musical conversation.
• Use graphic symbols, dot notation and stick notation, as appropriate, to keep a record of composed pieces.
• Use music technology, if available, to capture, change and combine sounds.

Musicianship

Pulse/Beat

• Understand that the speed of the beat can change, creating a faster or slower pace (tempo).
• Mark the beat of a listening piece by tapping or clapping and recognising tempo as well as changes in tempo.
• Walk in time to the beat of a piece of music or song. Know the difference between left and right to support coordination and shared movement with others.
• Begin to group beats in twos and threes by tapping knees on the first (strongest) beat and clapping the remaining beats.
• Identify the beat groupings in familiar music that they sing regularly and listen to.

Rhythm

• Play copycat rhythms, copying a leader, and invent rhythms for others to copy on untuned percussion.
• Create rhythms using word phrases as a starting point (e.g. Hel-lo Si-mon or Can you come and play?).
• Read and respond to chanted rhythm patterns, and represent them with stick notation including crotchets, quavers and crotchets rests.
• Create and perform their own chanted rhythm patterns with the same stick notation.

Pitch

• Play a range of singing games based on the cuckoo interval (so-mi) matching voices accurately, supported by a leader playing the melody. The melody could be played on a piano, acoustic instrument or backing track.
• Sing short phrases independently within a singing game or short song.
• Respond independently to pitch changes heard in short melodic phrases, indicating with actions (e.g. stand up/sit down, hands high/hands low).
• Recognise dot notation and match it to 3-note tunes played on tuned percussion.

Singing

• Sing a widening range of unison songs of varying styles and structures with a pitch range of do–so (e.g. Extreme Weather), tunefully and with expression. Perform forte and piano, loud and soft.
• Perform actions confidently and in time to a range of action songs (e.g. Heads and Shoulders).
• Walk, move or clap a steady beat with others, changing the speed of the beat as the tempo of the music changes.
• Perform as a choir in school assemblies.

Listening

• Listen to recorded performances of music from a variety of cultures, time periods and traditions.
• Experience live music making in and out of school.
• Talk about and understand the stories, origins, traditions, history and social context of the music they are listening to, singing and playing.

Composing

Compose

• Combine known rhythmic notation with letter names to create rising and falling phrases using just three notes (do, re and mi).
• Compose song accompaniments on untuned percussion using known rhythms and note values.

Improvise

• Become more skilled in improvising (using voices, tuned and untuned percussion and instruments played in whole-class/ group/ individual, inventing short ‘on-the-spot’ responses using a limited note-range.
• Structure musical ideas (e.g. using echo or question and answer phrases) to create music that has a beginning, middle and end. Pupils should compose in response to different stimuli, e.g. stories, verse, images (paintings and photographs) and musical sources.

Performing

• Develop facility in playing tuned percussion or a melodic instrument such as violin or recorder. Play and perform melodies following staff notation using a small range (e.g. Middle C–E/do–mi) as a whole class or in small groups (e.g. trios and quartets).
• Use listening skills to correctly order phrases using dot notation, showing different arrangements of notes C-D-E/do-re-mi
• Individually (solo) copy stepwise melodic phrases with accuracy at different speeds; allegro and adagio, fast and slow. Extend to question-and-answer phrases.

Reading Notation

• Introduce the stave, lines and spaces, and clef.
• Use dot notation to show higher or lower pitch.
• Introduce and understand the differences between crotchets and paired quavers.
• Apply word chants to rhythms, understanding how to link each syllable to one musical note.

Singing

• Continue to sing a broad range of unison songs with the range of an octave (do–do), pitching the voice accurately and following directions for getting louder (crescendo) and quieter (decrescendo).
• Sing rounds and partner songs in different time signatures (2, 3 and 4 time) and begin to sing repertoire with small and large leaps as well as a simple second part to introduce vocal harmony.
• Perform a range of songs in school assemblies.

Listening

• Listen to recorded performances of music from a variety of cultures, time periods and traditions.
• Experience live music making in and out of school.
• Talk about and understand the stories, origins, traditions, history and social context of the music they are listening to, singing and playing.

Composing

Compose

• Combine known rhythmic notation with letter names to create short pentatonic phrases using a limited range of 5 pitches suitable for the instruments being learnt. Sing and play these phrases as self-standing compositions.
• Arrange individual notation cards of known note values (i.e. minim, crotchet, crotchet rest and paired quavers) to create sequences of 2-, 3- or 4-beat phrases, arranged into bars.
• Explore developing knowledge of musical components by composing music to create a specific mood, for example creating music to accompany a short film clip.
• Introduce major and minor chords.
• Include instruments played in whole-class/group/individual teaching to expand the scope and range of the sound palette available for composition work.
• Capture and record creative ideas using any of:

• graphic symbols
• rhythm notation and time signatures
• staff notation
• technology

Improvise

• Improvise on a limited range of pitches on the instrument they are now learning, making use of musical features including smooth (legato) and detached (staccato).
• Begin to make compositional decisions about the overall structure of improvisations. Continue this process in the composition tasks below.

Performing

Instrumental Performance

• Develop facility in the basic skills of a selected musical instrument over a sustained learning period. This can be achieved through working closely with your local Music Education Hub who can provide whole-class instrumental teaching programmes.
• Play and perform melodies following staff notation using a small range (e.g. Middle C–G/do–so) as a whole-class or in small groups.
• Perform in two or more parts (e.g. melody and accompaniment or a duet) from simple notation using instruments played in whole class teaching. Identify static and moving parts.
• Copy short melodic phrases including those using the pentatonic scale (e.g. C, D, E, G, A).

Reading Notation

• Introduce and understand the differences between minims, crotchets, paired quavers and rests.
• Read and perform pitch notation within a defined range (e.g. C–G/do–so).
• Follow and perform simple rhythmic scores to a steady beat: maintain individual parts accurately within the rhythmic texture, achieving a sense of ensemble.

Singing

• Sing a broad range of songs from an extended repertoire with a sense of ensemble and performance. This should include observing phrasing, accurate pitching and appropriate style.
• Sing three-part rounds, partner songs, and songs with a verse and a chorus.
• Perform a range of songs in school assemblies and in school performance opportunities.

Listening

• Listen to recorded performances of music from a variety of cultures, time periods and traditions.
• Experience live music making in and out of school.
• Talk about and understand the stories, origins, traditions, history and social context of the music they are listening to, singing and playing.

Composing

Compose

• Compose melodies made from pairs of phrases in either C major or A minor or a key suitable for the instrument chosen. These melodies can be enhanced with rhythmic or chordal accompaniment.
• Working in pairs, compose a short ternary piece.
• Use chords to compose music to evoke a specific atmosphere, mood or environment. E.g. pupils might create music to accompany a silent film or to set a scene in a play or book.
• Capture and record creative ideas using any of:

• graphic symbols
• rhythm notation and time signatures
• staff notation
• technology

Improvise

• Improvise freely over a drone, developing sense of shape and character, using tuned percussion and melodic instruments.
• Improvise over a simple groove, responding to the beat, creating a satisfying melodic shape.
• Experiment with using a wider range of dynamics, including very loud (fortissimo), very quiet (pianissimo), moderately loud (mezzo forte), and moderately quiet (mezzo piano).

Performing

Instrumental Performance

• Play melodies on tuned percussion, melodic instruments or keyboards, following staff notation written on one stave and using notes within the Middle C–C′/do–do range. This should initially be done as a whole class with greater independence gained each lesson through smaller group performance.
• Understand how triads are formed, and play them on tuned percussion, melodic instruments or keyboards. Perform simple, chordal accompaniments to familiar songs.
• Perform a range of repertoire pieces and arrangements combining acoustic instruments to form mixed ensembles, including a school orchestra.
• Develop the skill of playing by ear on tuned instruments, copying longer phrases and familiar melodies.

Reading Notation

• Further understand the differences between semibreves, minims, crotchets and crotchet rests, paired quavers and semiquavers.
• Understand the differences between 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4 time signatures.
• Read and perform pitch notation within an octave (e.g. C–C′/do–do).
• Read and play short rhythmic phrases at sight from prepared cards, using conventional symbols for known rhythms and note durations.

Singing

• Sing a broad range of songs, including those that involve syncopated rhythms, as part of a choir, with a sense of ensemble and performance. This should include observing rhythm, phrasing, accurate pitching and appropriate style.
• Continue to sing three- and four-part rounds or partner songs, and experiment with positioning singers randomly within the group – i.e. no longer in discrete parts – in order to develop greater listening skills, balance between parts and vocal independence.
• Perform a range of songs as a choir in school assemblies, school performance opportunities and to a wider audience.

Listening

• Listen to recorded performances of music from a variety of cultures, time periods and traditions.
• Experience live music making in and out of school.
• Talk about and understand the stories, origins, traditions, history and social context of the music they are listening to, singing and playing.

Composing

Compose

• Plan and compose an 8- or 16-beat melodic phrase using the pentatonic scale (e.g. C, D, E, G, A) and incorporate rhythmic variety and interest. Play this melody on available tuned percussion and/or orchestral instruments. Notate this melody.
• Compose melodies made from pairs of phrases in either G major or E minor or a key suitable for the instrument chosen.
• Either of these melodies can be enhanced with rhythmic or chordal accompaniment.
• Compose a ternary piece; use available music software/apps to create and record it, discussing how musical contrasts are achieved.

Improvise

Extend improvisation skills through working in small groups to:

• Create music with multiple sections that include repetition and contrast.
• Use chord changes as part of an improvised sequence.
• Extend improvised melodies beyond 8 beats over a fixed groove, creating a satisfying melodic shape.

Performing

Instrumental Performance

• Play a melody following staff notation written on one stave and using notes within an octave range (do–do); make decisions about dynamic range, including very loud (ff), very quiet (pp), moderately loud (mf) and moderately quiet (mp).
• Accompany this same melody, and others, using block chords or a bass line. This could be done using keyboards, tuned percussion or tablets, or demonstrated at the board using an online keyboard.
• Engage with others through ensemble playing (e.g. school orchestra, band, mixed ensemble) with pupils taking on melody or accompaniment roles. The accompaniment, if instrumental, could be chords or a single-note bass line.

Reading Notation

• Further understand the differences between semibreves, minims, crotchets, quavers and semiquavers, and their equivalent rests.
• Further develop the skills to read and perform pitch notation within an octave (e.g. C–C/ do–do).
• Read and play confidently from rhythm notation cards and rhythmic scores in up to 4 parts that contain known rhythms and note durations.
• Read and play from notation a four-bar phrase, confidently identifying note names and durations