Barrs Court Primary School Website - South Gloucestershire

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Music and the Performing Arts are strengths of the school. This was recognised by OFSTED and our recent award of Gold Artsmark. (Click here to find out more about our Artsmark award).

'Pupils throughout the school make very

good progress in music and achieve standards that are above the national expectations. The standards achieved by

the school choir are exceptional and this

is a strength of the school.'

OFSTED

'When singing, pupils are brought to a particularly high standard of performance that generate an almost tangible sense of harmony and that has a spiritual dimension.' OFSTED

We provide opportunities for all children to create, play, perform and enjoy music, to develop the skills to appreciate a wide variety of musical forms and to begin to make judgements about the quality of music. We believe that singing lies at the heart of good music teaching. Our teaching focuses on developing the children's ability to sing in tune and with other people. Through singing songs, children learn about the structure and organisation of music. Chldren develop descriptive skills in music lessons when learning how music can represent feelings and emotions. We teach them the disciplined skills of recognising pulse and pitch. We also teach children how to work with others to make music and how individiuals combine together to make sounds. We also teach them musical notation and how to compose music.

All children are encouraged to learn a musical instrument. Weekly recorder classes for different groups are taught by five members of staff. We have an excellent ensemble who won the Bristol Eisteddfod cup for five consecutive years.

Peripatetic staff teach children flute, clarinet, keyboard and violin up to groups of a maximum of four children, once a week for 30 minutes.

Children who learn a musical instrument outside of school also get a chance to show their talents in weekly sharing assemblies.

We have an exceptional school choir and singing throughout the school is a strength. We love to sing as a whole school!

At Christmas our Year 6 pupils were asked to sing at the South Gloucestershire Schools' carol service in Clifton Cathedral.

The choir join a mass choir in an annual South Gloucestershire Music Festival at the Colston Hall each year. Teachers from Barrs Court conduct and play piano at the event.

Red Area put on a Christmas production bi-annually. This year we put on 'The Grumpy Sheep'. All children from reception through to Year 2 were involved.

We hold a bi-annual production which involves all of our KS2 children singing.

Music is used in many curriculum areas to enhance learning, e.g french vocabulary, maths, science etc. It also helps to keep children focussed and on task.

Multicultural experiences in music are rich. For example, recently as part of Arts Week, Andy Warn brought his Indonesian Gamelan for all Year 5 and 6 children to play. In the evening parents and carers were invited to come and play the gamelan too!

Many different musicians visit the school and give children opportunities to listen and play a range of musical instruments.

Every child in Blue Area is currently recieving Samba tuition from an outside providor as part of their music lessons. They are enjoying playing on the Samba drums and percussion instruments.

Red area children received drumming workshops during Arts Week this year. We pretended to be different tribes!