Music
Music is a world within itself, it's a language we all understand.
- Stevie Wonder
Our Approach
At Furzedown, we passionately believe that music is for everyone and we are committed to providing all our children with fantastic musical opportunities throughout the year.
All children have weekly class music lessons with our specialist music teacher, Miss Reeves, as well as key stage singing assemblies. All class music lessons are extremely practical, we have a focus on singing as well as many opportunities for children to play instruments as a class ensemble. EYFS and KS1 enjoy playing a variety of tuned and untuned percussion instruments, KS2 enjoy learning recorder, ukulele and keyboard.
Every year group, from Nursery to Year 6, has a chance to celebrate their musical talents (as well as acting and dancing skills) through their annual year group performance as well as at whole school events such as our Christmas and Summer Concerts and impromptu playground performances.
We place great significance on learning about the cultural significance of the music we are studying. Older children approach musical topics through inspirational pioneers – e.g. Stevie Wonder, David Bowie and Dolly Parton as well as taking time and care to thinking about the historical context for our topics – e.g. Blues and Samba.
Beyond the Curriculum
We are incredibly proud that so many of our children choose to participate in extra music activities each week, in addition to their curriculum lessons. Nearly half of the children in KS2 come to our lunchtime LKS2 and UKS2 Choirs, many enjoy our afterschool instrumental group, not to mention the numerous children who take private instrumental lessons at school including violin, drums, guitar, trumpet, clarinet, flute and saxophone.
We are proud to make full use of the wealth of opportunities available to us as a London primary school. Over their time at Furzedown, children are likely to attend several concerts with professional musicians, taking part in collaborative projects. We have a long history of working with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and also work closely with Wandsworth Music, our local Music hub.
We work hard to give children a life-long love of all aspects of music - performing, listening and composing. We nurture their musicianship and arm them with the skills they need to feel confident in their musical competence. Children leave Furzedown feeling ready and excited to engage in the musical life of their secondary schools, confident that they will be able to participate and excel.
Our Curriculum
Latest News in Music
We loved building our vocal confidence in the preparations for our Christmas Concert and Nativities last half term. We hope you enjoyed our performances!
We are busily preparing for more exciting events and performances this term including the Year 4 production, Year 3 are starting to learn the recorder and our after school ukelele club has got off to a brilliant start. Watch this space for more news and photos!