Logo Logo Logo Logo Logo
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Introduction
      • About Coleridge
      • Head’s Welcome
      • Ethos and Vision
      • Wellbeing
      • Gallery
      • Our Staff
      • School Performance
      • Ofsted
      • Admissions
      • Join Us
    • Governors
      • General Information
      • Our Governors
      • Meeting Dates
      • Governors’ Minutes
    • Information
      • Data Protection
      • Equality
      • Finance
      • Policies
      • PE & Sports Premium
      • Pupil Premium
  • News
    • Calendar
    • News Archive
    • Head’s Newsletter
    • School Blog
    • The Coleridge Newspaper
    • Staff Vacancies
  • Learning
    • Teaching and Learning
      • Core Values
      • The School Day
      • Teaching Styles
      • Assessment and Reporting
      • Special Educational Needs & Disability
    • Extra Curricular
      • Clubs
      • Trips
      • Bus Stop Buddies
      • Counselling Service
      • Forest School
    • The Coleridge Curriculum
      • Curriculum Rationale
      • English
      • Reading
      • Maths
      • Science
      • Computing & Online Safety
      • Google Classroom
      • Home Learning
      • PE & Sport
      • Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education
      • The Arts
      • Values Education
      • Wider Curriculum
  • Year Groups
    • Nursery
    • Reception
    • Year 1
    • Year 2
    • Year 3
    • Year 4
    • Year 5
    • Year 6
  • Parents
    • Coleridge Families
    • New Parents
    • Back To School
    • Claiming Pupil Premium
    • Code of Conduct
    • Forms
    • Fundraising
    • Getting Involved
    • Order School Milk
    • Parents Evening
    • Payments
    • Raising Concerns
    • Requesting Information
    • School Meals
  • Contact
  • Home
  • About Us

    • Introduction
      • About Coleridge
      • Head’s Welcome
      • Ethos and Vision
      • Wellbeing
      • Gallery
      • Our Staff
      • School Performance
      • Ofsted
      • Admissions
      • Join Us
    • Governors
      • General Information
      • Our Governors
      • Meeting Dates
      • Governors’ Minutes
    • Information
      • Data Protection
      • Equality
      • Finance
      • Policies
      • PE & Sports Premium
      • Pupil Premium
  • News

    • Calendar
    • News Archive
    • Head’s Newsletter
    • School Blog
    • The Coleridge Newspaper
    • Staff Vacancies
  • Learning

    • Teaching and Learning
      • Core Values
      • The School Day
      • Teaching Styles
      • Assessment and Reporting
      • Special Educational Needs & Disability
    • Extra Curricular
      • Clubs
      • Trips
      • Bus Stop Buddies
      • Counselling Service
      • Forest School
    • The Coleridge Curriculum
      • Curriculum Rationale
      • English
      • Reading
      • Maths
      • Science
      • Computing & Online Safety
      • Google Classroom
      • Home Learning
      • PE & Sport
      • Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education
      • The Arts
      • Values Education
      • Wider Curriculum
  • Year Groups

    • Nursery
    • Reception
    • Year 1
    • Year 2
    • Year 3
    • Year 4
    • Year 5
    • Year 6
  • Parents

    • Coleridge Families
    • New Parents
    • Back To School
    • Claiming Pupil Premium
    • Code of Conduct
    • Forms
    • Fundraising
    • Getting Involved
    • Order School Milk
    • Parents Evening
    • Payments
    • Raising Concerns
    • Requesting Information
    • School Meals
  • Contact

The Arts

The Arts

Home > Learning  > The Coleridge Curriculum > The Arts

Coleridge is an inclusive environment, where all children are offered equal opportunities to access and benefit fully from our Creative Arts Curriculum. We have found that it is within the arts that those children who may find the more academic areas of school life challenging, are able to develop their ‘voice’ and in doing so, nurture their talents.

At Coleridge, we place the arts at the heart of our curriculum, knowing that in doing so, we allow all children to thrive at school, not just those who achieve academically.

Throughout our curriculum, we give the utmost priority to children’s emotional wellbeing; we recognise that the arts provide a constructive outlet for stress and anxiety, whilst also helping to develop social skills and boost confidence, and therefore ensure it is a prominent part of what we offer.

Art

We believe wholeheartedly that our full and rich art curriculum enables children to develop their individuality and sense of self, and that the creativity, problem solving and freedom of thinking involved also increases their cognitive ability. Furthermore, by being encouraged to constructively critique their own and other artists’ work, they learn to respect themselves and each other.

Our art curriculum is taught in Years 1-6, and planned for in the EYFS, by three specialists, and all classes receive a full morning or afternoon of this expert art provision every other week, in one of our dedicated art rooms.

From the outset, children are taught the technical skills and knowledge required to explore their imagination, generate and create original ideas, and make considered judgements about their own work, as well as that of others. During their time at Coleridge, they will learn how to draw, paint, print, sculpt, collage and use textiles to invent and create their own varied works of art using a range of materials. In doing so, they will explore the formal elements – shape, line, pattern, colour, form, tone, space and texture. All topics are linked to other areas of the curriculum, such as the Ancient Greeks in History, Coastal Areas in Geography, and Space in Science.

Another important aspect of our art curriculum is that it provides children with the opportunity to explore the world around them, to learn about and appreciate their own cultural heritage and that of others, and to study the work of a range of artists, both contemporary and historical.

Highlights of the school arts year include art exhibitions (both in and outside of school), the whole school play every December, and the wealth of arts-based clubs on offer, including a nurture group for those children most in need.

You can find a more detailed breakdown of our art curriculum here.

Music

Music is an integral part of everyday life and learning at Coleridge.  We believe passionately in the importance of giving all our children every possible opportunity to develop their love, enjoyment and understanding of music.  As well as the intrinsic value of musicality, its important contribution to children’s phonological awareness, language development and reading skills, and its transformative power in personal wellbeing and emotional development, all lie at the heart of our commitment to providing an excellent musical learning experience for our children.

Our music curriculum is carefully designed to ensure that each year children build their musical understanding and skills.  This is centred around four key activities:

  • Singing
  • Listening and responding
  • Instrumental playing and performing
  • Composing and improvising

Our sequenced approach, whereby children regularly practise and improve their skills in these four activities, enables them to expand their understanding of the eight key elements, or building blocks, of musical understanding:

  • Pitch – how high or low notes are; how big the ‘jumps’ are between notes
  • Duration – pulse (a regular beat), rhythms, long and short sounds
  • Texture – single sounds or layers of sounds played together
  • Timbre (tarm-br) – describing the different qualities of sounds
  • Dynamics – from loud to quiet to silence
  • Tempo – speed or pace of music and how it changes
  • Structure – how music is arranged, e.g. verse and chorus, call and response
  • Notation – how is represented in written or picture form

This deepened understanding in turn progressively improves their skills in singing, listening, playing and composing.

You can find a more detailed breakdown of our music curriculum here.

Singing

Singing lies at the heart of music at Coleridge.  From the early years through to Year 6, children learn and perform songs in class singing sessions, as part of their music curriculum lessons, and in weekly singing assemblies.  Our Year 2 and Junior Choirs perform each year at our Carol Concert, and the Junior Choir has also performed at numerous local events, as well as at the O2 and the Royal Albert Hall.   The annual school play provides further choir and solo singing opportunities for our Key Stage 2 children.

Instruments

Children have the opportunity to experiment, play, improvise and compose using percussion instruments in their regular class music lessons.  All children in Years 3 and 4 also learn the ukulele.  In addition to this, through Haringey Music Service, we offer individual instrumental lessons in recorder, guitar, trumpet, flute, violin, cello and French horn. Children who have been learning an instrument for a year or more can join our weekly Tuesday morning orchestra, and our annual school play gives our more talented instrumental players the chance to shine in the accompanying band.

How music works alongside other subjects

Our approach to music at Coleridge is rooted in the intrinsic value of musical understanding and skills in their own right.  However, there are explicit and implicit links with a number of other areas of the curriculum.

English, phonological awareness, language development and early reading
Learning songs and rhymes, and the impact this has on children’s phonological development, puts singing and music at the heart of our early years provision.  However, we have early readers at all stages of the school and regular class singing sessions, singing assemblies, and music lessons ensure that all children continue to benefit from singing frequently and having regular exposure to written lyrics of the songs they learn too. In a number of composition and notation activities based around songs, pulse and rhythms, children focus on words and syllables to support both their musical and linguistic understanding.

PSHE
The transformative power of music, and particularly collective singing, is well-known, and this very much informs the importance we place on singing and music-making.  Furthermore, many songs learned throughout the school, e.g. Lean On Me, I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel (To Be Free), I’ve Got a Grumpy Face, Sunshine In My Heart, reference the school’s core values and some of the subject themes addressed in PSHE lessons.

Wider Curriculum
A number of our music curriculum units (e.g. Temples, Tombs and Treasures, The Earth Our Home, Victorians) link explicitly with History and Science units of work.  However, the foremost priority of our curriculum design is very much on the development of musical understanding, with such links to other subjects being a secondary benefit rather than a principal consideration.

Black History Month
Year 6 study a unit based around a number of songs from different African countries in Autumn 1.  All year groups pick at least one song by well-known black artists to sing, listen to and learn about for Black History Month.

Listen to us

Junior Choir & School Orchestra – Gloria

https://coleridgeprimary.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Coleridge-Choir-Orchestra-Gloria.mp3

Junior Choir – Rockstar

https://coleridgeprimary.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Coleridge-Choir-Rock-Star.mp3

Junior Choir – Mamma Mia

https://coleridgeprimary.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Coleridge-Choir-Mama-Mia.mp3
Related Pages
  • Curriculum Rationale
  • English
  • Reading
  • Maths
  • Science
  • Computing & Online Safety
  • Google Classroom
  • Home Learning
  • PE & Sport
  • Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education
  • The Arts
  • Values Education
  • Wider Curriculum
  • Read Full Story
    Book Corners Have Arrived - Thank You!
    We are delighted to announce that our first set of new book corner furniture has now arrived in school and is in place in our Year 3 and 4 classrooms!...
  • Read Full Story
    Mr Choueke's Newsletter - January 2023
    Dear Parents and Carers, Welcome back to the new term, we hope you all had a very restful break and that your children have settled happily back into school. School Development Priorities (SDP)...
  • Read Full Story
    Making A Mark with Our New Sketch Books
    This year, we’ve introduced sketch books at Coleridge. Art lessons often begin with a warm up activity which links to the topic and usually connects with a formal element e.g....
  • Read Full Story
    Merry Christmas From All At Coleridge
    After another busy year at the school, and amidst a sprinkling of festive snow (we think there's still some that hasn't melted or been made into snowmen!), we'd like to...
  • Read Full Story
    New Financial Skills Programme Through RedSTART
    We are delighted to announce that Coleridge has paired up with the charity RedSTART to deliver the Changing the Game programme to all children in Years 2 to 6 in...
  • Read Full Story
    Mr Choueke's Newsletter - November 2022
    Dear Parents and Carers, I hope you are all well. it has been lovely seeing so many of you back in school over the last few weeks, visiting your children’s classrooms...
  • Read Full Story
    Artwork Inspired by Trinidadian Textile Artist Althea McNish
    Children at Coleridge have been studying the artist Althea McNish. Born in Trinidad and living in Tottenham since the 1950s, she became the first Black British textile designer to earn...
  • Read Full Story
    Support Coleridge When Buying Your Christmas Tree
    We are happy to announce that this year we are working with Christmas On The Hill with a Christmas tree buying opportunity which benefits both families, and the school. For every...
  • Read Full Story
    School Tours - New Dates Added Due To High Demand
    Due to high demand, we have added three more dates for school tours, where prospective parents can visit the school before applying for a place for their child. We're confident...
  • Read Full Story
    Black History Month - Something Inside So Strong
    The theme of our Black History Month has been ‘Finding a Voice, Telling a Story'. Children this half term have been learning how music can give people a voice by...
  • Read Full Story
    Mr Choueke's Newsletter - September 2022
    Dear Parents and Carers,  I hope that you have had a restful summer break and that your children have settled in well to the new term.  Welcome to all our new families I...
  • Read Full Story
    Junior Choir and Orchestra Team Up For Performance
    This summer we had a Coleridge first, our Junior Choir and Orchestra joined forces to put on a very special performance. We spent the summer term learning Vivaldi’s Gloria, which...
Contact Us

Coleridge Primary School
77 Crouch End Hill
London
N8 8DN

020 8340 3173

admin@coleridgeprimary.net

Headteacher: Mr Leon Choueke

Connect With Us
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Subscribe to our Calendar
Useful Websites
  • Staff Email
  • Coleridge Office 365
  • Coleridge G Suite
  • Google Classroom
  • FSM Eligibility Checker
  • Order School Milk
  • Parents Evening
  • Payments
Year Groups
  • Nursery
  • Reception
  • Year one
  • Year two
  • Year three
  • Year four
  • Year Five
  • Year six
Website design by Creative Schools