Choose your country to see relevant content
English (South Africa)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Music is a product of, and a medium for, creativity. As long as humans have existed in community, so has song, verse and tune. Music both reflects the human experience, and gives us a way to express ourselves that goes beyond simple communication. It doesn’t take much to convince a person that a favourite song brings back memories, a shared song of worship can bring people to tears, and an artist loved across the world for eras can bring people from across the globe into an amphitheatre!
Music matters. Of course it does. Yet in the traditional school day, a big heap of other things matter too. Phonics checks, SATS, maths assessments, reporting - the list goes on. When so many things matter in primary education, music is frequently put to the back of the queue. Understandably so, when measurable data, school expectations and (often) a dearth in specific musical training exists. We believe, however, that music has an incredibly important role in connecting all subjects together, deserving its own specific place in the curriculum to honour it.
In this article, we’ll be sharing with you the myriad of ways music education can positively benefit core curriculum subjects when taught both explicitly as a lesson, and embedded throughout all teaching. We’re focusing on Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, and we’ll break down how music can positively impact key curriculum concepts.
What the national curriculum says:
Mathematics is an interconnected subject in which pupils need to be able to move fluently between representations of mathematical ideas. The programmes of study are, by necessity, organised into apparently distinct domains, but pupils should make rich connections across mathematical ideas to develop fluency, mathematical reasoning and competence in solving increasingly sophisticated problems.
Click for more
When thinking musically we move repeatedly through different concepts all at once. For more fluent musicians, we’re moving through reading notation, adapting tempo, all while physically moving our bodies in a variety of ways depending on our instrument.
For budding learners we’re exploring new concepts, and recognising how different genres speak in their own languages that are similar to one another but have their own distinctions. Just as mathematical ideas have ‘varied representations’ connecting into ‘distinct domains’, music takes various forms that have their own flavour yet maintain connections. Just as learners get to grips with their musical side, developing their fluency and sophistication as they go, so do budding mathematicians.
We want to make it clear that as you strengthen your musical muscles, those same muscles get built up to tackle mathematical problems.
The research backs this concept up. Holmes and Hallam (2017) found that ‘music has an impact on spatial-temporal skills’... ‘considered to be high-level mathematical abilities’. Equally a recent meta-analysis (Akin, 2022) found that music-based interventions significantly improved mathematical ability. As the mind explores how a regular beat of a drum overlaps the twang of a guitar, how differently structured instruments produce different sounds and how all this can be represented in a sheet of notes, neural pathways are made - and mathematical thinking follows.
What the national curriculum says:
English has a pre-eminent place in education and in society. A high-quality education in English will teach pupils to speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others, and through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them. Through reading in particular, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Literature, especially, plays a key role in such development. Reading also enables pupils both to acquire knowledge and to build on what they already know. All the skills of language are essential to participating fully as a member of society; pupils who do not learn to speak, read and write fluently and confidently are effectively disenfranchised.
Click for more
How music helps:
English and Literacy as subjects encompass a wide range of skills, but at their core is a focus on an ability to communicate ideas, while understanding the context in which they have come to be. English gives students the tools to take on information of all genres, using this information to develop their personhood. It’s about pouring in, taking in, and pouring back out into the world.
To us, this sounds very similar indeed to the process of musical development. We explore the wonder that other musicians have put out into the world through their craft. We learn how to understand and negotiate that craft, and we work on pouring out our own contribution back into wider society. Just as the pathways learners make in music are followed along in mathematical thinking, the processes of learning to communicate in English beautifully complement the process of learning and exploring music.
