KS3 Curriculum

Year 7

Term 1 - Our Music Community. The core purpose of this unit is to enable all students to recognise that they are musicians, regardless of their starting point. Through hands-on singing and playing, listening and analysing, students develop their musical understanding of what it means to hear, think and respond like a musician.

Term 2 - British Folk Music - Focus: Melodic shape, phrase structure, and how melodies relate to scales/modes and the tonic. Hands-on exercises incorporate aspects of performing, improvising, composing and analytical listening.

Term 3 - Reggae music - Focus: Connecting melody with simple harmonic frameworks and the role of the bass line. There’s also a rhythmic focus on the syncopated character of Calypso melodies, the skank rhythms of Ska, and bass lines of Reggae. Hands-on exercises in performing, improvising, composing and analytical listening.

Year 8

Term 1 - Ode to Joy - Focus: Building on the foundations of melodic and harmonic knowledge established in year 7, this unit explores balanced phrasing and its relationship with functional harmony. Alongside performing, and analytical listening, students' musical understanding is developed through improvising and composing, using both set 'recipe' tasks and creative discovery.

Term 2 - 'Jazz and Blues Music' - Focus: Developing students’ confidence and skill when improvising as part of an ensemble, building on their existing harmonic understanding using extension chords, and the handling of expressive dissonance. It’s also about capturing the rhythmic swagger of shuffle rhythms and the freedom of the swung beat.

Term 3 - The Four Chord Pop Trick - Focus: Developing students' understanding of the versatility of functional harmony, making use of I, IV, V and VI in chordal ostinati. Hands-on exercises in performing, improvising, composing and analytical listening.

Year 9

Term 1 - Ground Bass - Focus: Developing students' understanding of texture, in particular - homophony, canon and polyphony. Improvising, arranging and rehearsing exercises, focusing on the manipulation of compositional devices, and the development and deployment of short melodic motifs over chordal and bass ostinati.

Term 2 - Minimalism - Focus: Developing students’ understanding of textural layering, the manipulation and reworking of repeating patterns, the art of phasing, and contrapuntal interlocking techniques. Hands-on exercises incorporate aspects of performing, improvising, composing, arranging and analytical listening.

Term 3 - Electronic Dance Music - Focus: Motivic development, the craft of writing countermelodies, and the handling of elaboration, fragmentation, augmentation and diminution. It's also an exploration of how texture can be used to create contrast through the 'build - tension - release' techniques found in a range of musical traditions.