Music

Music is a part of daily school life at SJA and is valued by staff and pupils for the impact it has upon learning and mental well being.

Music

 Listening to music and singing are key tools used across the school to optimise the success of activities. All children have weekly singing assemblies and are involved in a performance to an audience (virtual or live) during each school year. For Year 6, this is an end of year production at the Capitol Theatre in Horsham.

Enjoyment is key in class music lessons and learning is active and links to the ‘real’ world of music. Many of the projects involve working collaboratively with others.

All SJA children are musicians. They sing, perform, compose, and listen and respond. Learning is based upon our 3 key concepts: Access to the ‘real’ world of music, Talent as Musicians and Decoding and applying what they see and hear.  As the children move through SJA they continually revisit and build upon our key concepts developing their skills and knowledge as musicians.

Class music takes place in the SJA music room, which is a dedicated space for music with excellent resources – whole class sets of instruments (ukuleles, non-tuned percussion, tuned percussion), access to school ipads to use technology to support their learning, a wireless blue tooth amplifier to enable outside rehearsals and performances, and recording facilities to capture key moments and listen back to inform future projects.

Class music and music clubs are taught by a specialist music teacher. Our music clubs are extremely popular, and throughout the year, there are opportunities for children across the school to represent SJA musically. For example, singing workshops at Christ’s Hospital, West Sussex Music 'Big Sings' and Young Voices at the 02.

All children at SJA learn to play the ukulele from Year 3 -6 in their class music lessons, and they have the opportunity to learn a vast array of other instruments with our visiting peripatetic teachers.