Music and History Projects

It is our aim for pupils to enjoy a variety of musical experiences whilst they are at Petersfield. Music is usually taught as a class activity. We use the online Charanga curriculum to deliver our main music curriculum. This includes the teaching of musical knowledge, concepts and skills are part of a broad and balanced curriculum, based on the skills of: singing and performing, composing, listening and responding to recorded music.

In order to deepen their skills as musicians, pupils will be shown a variety of instruments and music and asked about how they help us to engage emotionally and physically. They will be taught how to respond to music compositions and musical sounds so they can create and compose their own musical ideas and compositions with an increasing level of independence and recording as they move throughout their school career. Children are encouraged to identify and play a selection of instruments, with their sounds, patterns and contrasts in music spanning a range of genres, and use them to combine a range of instruments and voice/body to create percussive and melodic compositions.

We enable children to enjoy music through the development of listening skills and musical appreciation of live and recorded music. We use the BBC 10 pieces as part of our wider listening and appraising across the school and ensure good coverage of the history of music including living composers. Children are invited to choose music to listen to in our Collective Worship and assemblies. Teachers use the 2021 model music curriculum document to help engage the children in age appropriate music and a wide range of repertoire and musical genres. Children learn about a wide range of musical periods and of significant composers throughout Britain and the world in both lessons and in whole school sessions.

They will be encouraged to sing regularly with a view to perform at least annually to a wider audience. The vocabulary children use to discuss music will be built on each year. Each class has music playing during the day, this is to provide a pleasant and calm environment and to further more explore the variety of musical styles and periods.

Peripatetic Musical Tuition

Pupils have the opportunity to learn to play the piano with Mrs Lynn and many instruments in a band in the Rock Steady group, such as electric guitar, drums, and keyboard and use their vocals.

Hollands Cup

This cup is awarded half termly to a musician who has been recognised for outstanding musical achievement in school music lessons. It was presented to our school by Mr Don Hollands, a long time good friend to our school, pianist and a past parent. In July 2021, we introduced the Hollands Trophy in memory of Mr Hollands. This Trophy is awarded to a child who has excelled in their extracurricular music activities and we invite nominations from music teachers who work at Petersfield and those who teach our pupils outside of school. In July 2021, this new trophy was introduced following our inaugural virtual music extravaganza where pupils who learn an instrument in school or at home were invited to contribute to a virtual performance.

Young Voices

Regularly, pupils in Year 5 and 6 have the opportunity to go to the O2 to be part of the biggest choir in the world! We learn the songs and then sing to the whole school in a special celebration assembly.

The Young'uns

This amazing folk band have visited our school on multiple occasions and worked with both the whole school and with Pine class, as part of “When Cambridgeshire Sings”. They have explored British Values, history and our locality through music. We look forward to working with them again soon! Projects are based on our locality. Recently, they took us on a time-travelling journey, stopping at key periods in Orwell's history. At each stage we took part in activities and sung songs linked to that time. For example, we went back 100,000 years to when there were lions, hyenas, bears and other animals living around here. We learned about the Barrington Hippo which was discovered in the Barrington Cement Works and can be seen in the Sedgwick Museum in Cambridge. We listened to a song all about the Barrington bones! We really enjoyed learning and singing the sea shanties and we learned that the sailors used them to create a rhythm for when they were working together. They also sung them to bring people together and motivate themselves.

You can hear below the pupils' creations thanks to our work with the Young'uns.

As a school, we created and performed an anthem which celebrates the great things about Petersfield School.

We're Petersfield school we sing out loud

Five strong trees we're standing proud

Ash, Elm, Pine, Rowan and Yew

With love and peace we'll sing to you

We're Petersfield school, we're Petersfield school

Together we work and play

We'll grow up smart with love in our heart

We're Petersfield school - hooray!

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Before, during and post Covid (the later virtually) all of the children continue to be very excited to, work alongside the celebrated folk band. The Young’Uns are a three times BBC Radio 2 Folk Award winning trio from Teesside, made up of Sean Cooney, David Eagle and Michael Hughes. One collaboration had the intent of creating a ‘Petersfield Values Anthem’ which captures our school values and what we stand for as a school community. We are really proud of the hard work and enthusiasm the children put into writing the song. Each class contributed a verse and the Young’Uns put it together, set to music. Here is a taste of the song:

We're Petersfield school and we'll be your guide

Through our school values, we sing with pride

Live life to the full, welcome through our door

Together Everyone Achieves More

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First of friendship we will sing

We treat each other as equals here

Including everyone in everything

When we work together there's nothing to fear

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Click here to hear more of our annual creations with the Young'uns:

When Cambridgeshire Sings

When Cambridgeshire Sings was a folk song project supported by Heritage Schools, which started with 16 Primary schools in Cambridgeshire, and has extended to include schools in Bedford, Buckingham, Milton Keynes, Norfolk, Northampton, Luton and Suffolk, and the eight Champion Heritage Schools (one in each of the Heritage Schools regions).

When Cambridgeshire Sings was originally set up in autumn 2019 by Karin Horowitz, who is a leadership and well-being coach and consultant, providing leadership and well-being support to head teachers and their teams. She has a strong interest in folk music and invited National Folk Award-winning singers The Young‘uns to work with 16 Primary schools to write new folk songs based on their local heritage. The songs were launched as an 'advent calendar' (a new song posted every day) on YouTube in December 2019. Children from Petersfield took part in the original project as you can hear above.

The Young'uns have a strong track record of working with schools through singing workshops, song writing sessions, storytelling and drama activities. Two of the band members were teachers before becoming full-time musicians. "We discovered folk songs and their transformative power by accident when we were teenagers. They gave us a proud, outward looking, inclusive and creative identity. We thought: 'why didn't anyone teach us these songs when we were at school?’ It's been part of our mission ever since to share and create songs that celebrate heritage and community in fun creative ways with as many young people as possible." (Sean Cooney, The Young’uns)

As part of the Heritage School project, Petersfield staff continue to receive training and bespoke resources to support the teaching of history at Petersfield. We have now received a Historic England Heritage Schools Award for the children’s amazing song about the Orwell Clunch Pit and the history work in school.

To conclude the project, classes from Petersfield watched a live virtual concert from the Young 'Uns where they sang all of the songs which were recorded during the original 'When Cambridgeshire sings' project. Members of Yew Class who took part in the original project introduced their song and we received our plaque. We are very proud of the children!

School Choir

After a half term of practising, our new choir performed their first piece at the Lent Church Service in 2025. They sang beautifully! Now everyone has seen them perform, we look forward to other children joining the choir.