Upper KS2 Music Curriculum Map (Years 5–6)

How Kidstrument’s Year 5 and Year 6 projects meet the Upper Key Stage 2 programme of study: confident singing, secure rhythm and note values, staff notation and intervals, harmony and chords, listening across styles, ensemble performance and clear progression into secondary music.

What Upper KS2 music covers in Kidstrument

For Key Stage 2, the music programme of study says pupils should be able to:

Play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and playing musical instruments with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression.
Improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the interrelated dimensions of music.
Listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory.
Use and understand staff and other musical notations.
Appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians.
Develop an understanding of the history of music.

Kidstrument’s UKS2 route is designed so that Year 5 and Year 6 together secure and deepen these expectations. Year 5 takes pupils through 1960s Rock and 1970s Funk with a sharp focus on rhythm, note values, chords and groove. Year 6 builds on that with 1970s Motown, Disco and 1980s Pop, consolidating intervals, scales, advanced rhythm work and performance ready for secondary.

Three terms in each year, with six sequenced sessions per term (18 per year).
Each session made from 9–13 short activities rather than one long task.
Repeated warm-up / move / read / listen / perform pattern; only the style, songs and detail change.

This overview shows the big picture of what’s happening when your Year 5 and Year 6 classes follow the Kidstrument sequence you’ve mapped into your grid: how Rock, Funk, Motown, Disco and 80s Pop are used to secure singing, rhythm, notation, harmony, listening and musical understanding across Upper KS2.

Upper KS2 music overview illustration across Years 5 and 6 — Years 5 and 6 each have 18 sessions over 3 terms. The same core strands repeat with new Rock, Funk, Motown, Disco and 80s Pop content so pupils can show progression.

Weekly lessons or shorter “bursts”

Across the school, Kidstrument sessions can be delivered as:

Traditional lessons (for example, one 30–45 minute slot per week), or
De-linearised “bursts” across the timetable — a song before registration, a listening game after break, a short movement or vocabulary task later in the day.

Because Upper KS2 sessions are built from small, focused activities, they adapt to the reality of primary timetables while still giving you a coherent, inspectable journey through Years 5 and 6.

Year 5 and Year 6 at a glance

The summaries below show how Kidstrument uses Rock, Funk, Motown, Disco and 80s Pop to organise the Upper KS2 music curriculum across rhythm, notation, harmony, listening and performance.

Year 5 – Rock and Funk: rhythm, values and harmony

Year 5 is split between 1960s Rock and 1970s Funk: Big Rock Blues anchors Autumn and Spring; It Ain’t Easy anchors Summer. Across the three terms, pupils:

Use Vocal Warm Up 1–5, Dance: Rock/Funk and song performances to sing and move with confidence, first in a Rock groove and later in Funk.
Work through Rhythms 1–4, explicit note-value lessons (semibreve to semiquaver and rests), Weekly Drum Routine 5–6, Musical Morse Code Level 2 and Shape Shifters to secure reading, counting and playing rhythms.
Extend notation with Rainbow Dots 5–9, Skies and Valleys 7–10 and What’s the Pitch?, linking stave patterns to real Rock and Funk riffs.
Build harmony skills with What is a Chord?, major/minor triads, Quickfire Chords, “Major or Minor?” challenges and Musical Cabbage note-name games.
Meet a range of Rock and Funk artists and styles through Critical Listening, Music Detective and “Who is…?” clips, supported by Crosswords, Find the Words and True or False.

By the end of Year 5, pupils can label and use note values, recognise and describe chords, read more complex patterns and perform confidently in Rock and Funk contexts.

View Year 5 curriculum map

Year 5 music curriculum overview for Rock and Funk — Year 5: 1960s Rock and 1970s Funk, with a strong focus on rhythm, note values and chords.

Year 6 – Motown, Disco and 80s Pop: intervals, scales and consolidation

Year 6 pulls together the whole of KS2 through three projects: This Time It’s Different (Motown), Just Dance (Disco) and When I’m With You (80s Pop). Across 18 sessions, pupils:

Continue to use Vocal Warm Up 1–5 and style-based dance (Motown, Disco, 80s Pop and Rhythmic Pyramid) to sing with expression and move in time to more demanding grooves.
Tackle advanced rhythm work through Weekly Drum Routine 7–8, Beat Blox, Beat the Grid, Forbidden Rhythms and Musical Morse Code Level 3, building multi-layered patterns.
Deepen pitch and interval knowledge via the Minor Pentatonic scale, tones and semitones, major/minor scale work and a full What’s the Pitch? sequence for interval recognition and description.
Revisit harmony, triads and accidentals in context so pupils can talk about how chords and intervals shape Motown, Disco and 80s Pop melodies.
Use Critical Listening, Music Detective, Konnakol and retrieval activities to secure vocabulary, stylistic understanding and aural skills ready for secondary music.

By the end of Year 6, pupils can read, hear and describe rhythms, scales and intervals, perform in different styles and show they are ready to step into Key Stage 3 music.

View Year 6 curriculum map

Year 6 music curriculum overview with Motown, Disco and 80s Pop focus — Year 6: Motown, Disco and 80s Pop projects consolidate KS2 rhythm, notation and intervals.

How Upper KS2 Kidstrument maps to the National Curriculum

The rows below show how your mapped Year 5 and Year 6 activities combine to cover the Key Stage 2 music aims at Upper KS2 level.

Play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and playing musical instruments with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression (Upper KS2 focus)

Across Years 5 and 6, every term returns to a core class track in a clear style. Pupils warm up, learn the song, add movement, then perform more independently (including karaoke versions), while desk-drumming and optional ukulele provide ensemble-style instrumental work.

Key activity families: Vocal Warm Up 1–5; Watch / Perform / Karaoke versions of Big Rock Blues, It Ain’t Easy, This Time It’s Different, Just Dance and When I’m With You; Dance: Rock, Funk, Motown, Disco, 80s Pop and Dance: Rhythmic Pyramid; Weekly Drum Routine 5–8 (desk drum-kit patterns); optional Ukulele Course sessions. Together these give regular, inspectable solo and ensemble opportunities using both voice and instruments.

Improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the interrelated dimensions of music (Upper KS2 focus)

Improvisation and composition in UKS2 build on Lower KS2 work: pupils adapt rhythmic “engines”, experiment with note values, intervals and chords, and make small-scale decisions about how to shape Rock, Funk, Motown, Disco and Pop patterns.

Key activity families: Rhythms 1–4 in different projects (re-combining beats and rests); Weekly Drum Routine, Beat Blox and Beat the Grid (designing and varying bar patterns); Musical Morse Code Levels 2–3 (creating and decoding rhythm messages); Shape Shifters and Roars and Whispers (choosing dynamics and duration changes); Minor Pentatonic and scale work linked to Motown and Pop melodies; Quickfire Chords, “Major or Minor?” and harmony clips as a palette for chord choices. Where schools want it, these can be extended into short composition tasks or simple band arrangements built around the project songs.

Listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory (Upper KS2 focus)

Listening tasks ask pupils to spot changes in rhythm, texture, harmony and dynamics and to recall grooves, riffs and melodic shapes across sessions. Aural memory is exercised every time they return to the project songs and rhythm engines.

Key activity families: Music Detective (Rock, Funk, Motown, Disco, 80s Pop); Critical Listening tasks for the same styles; Skies and Valleys 7–10 and What’s the Pitch? 1–4 (hearing pitch direction and intervals); Musical Morse Code Levels 2–3 (rapid rhythm recall); Konnakol overview/workshops for spoken rhythm recall; repeated work with the five anchor songs so pupils can remember and describe sections, patterns and changes in detail.

Use and understand staff and other musical notations (Upper KS2 focus)

Notation at Upper KS2 moves beyond basic stave awareness into fluent reading of more complex pitch and rhythm patterns, intervals, ties, ledger lines and accidentals, all directly linked to the songs and rhythm work in each project.

Key activity families: Rainbow Dots 5–9 (extended pitch and rhythm reading); note-value and rest lessons (semibreve to semiquaver); Parts of Notes, Ledger Lines and Ties; Minor Pentatonic scale notation and scale patterns; What’s the Pitch? sequences (seeing intervals on the stave); harmony clips (triads, chord symbols, accidentals in chords); Musical Cabbage retrieval for note names and positions; KS2 Workbooks, Crosswords, Find the Words, True or False, Match and Order activities for written consolidation where needed.

Appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians (Upper KS2 focus)

Upper KS2 focuses on Rock, Funk, Motown, Disco and 80s Pop as part of a broader KS2 journey. Pupils hear high-quality recordings, analyse band roles and learn about key artists whose work has shaped popular music.

Key activity families: Critical Listening and Music Detective tasks in all five styles; rhythm-section focus clips (Drums, Bass, Guitar, Keys, Vocals in Rock/Funk/Motown/Disco/Pop); “Who is…?” clips on Credence Clearwater Revival, Tina Turner, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, Ray Charles, Tower of Power, Chaka Khan, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Gloria Gaynor, Earth, Wind & Fire, Sister Sledge, The Bee Gees, Madonna, Whitney Houston, Prince, David Bowie and others. These sit alongside earlier KS2 work on jazz and Rock and Roll to build a genuinely broad musical picture.

Develop an understanding of the history of music (Upper KS2 focus)

Upper KS2 makes it clear that Rock, Funk, Motown, Disco and 80s Pop come from different decades and scenes. Pupils connect what they learned about 1920s jazz and 1950s Rock and Roll in Lower KS2 to later popular styles, seeing a simple musical timeline take shape.

Key activity families: “Who is…?” and style overview clips that reference decades and locations; artist stories in Motown, Disco and 80s Pop units (e.g. Motown as a label, Disco clubs, 80s Pop and music videos); comparisons between Rock/Funk/Motown/Disco/Pop rhythm sections and earlier KS2 jazz/Rock and Roll bands; retrieval tasks (Find the Words, Crosswords, True or False and Workbooks) that revisit style names, eras and key figures. Together these give pupils a clear, age-appropriate sense that music changes over time and that the styles they are learning sit within a bigger story.

Where to go next in the Upper KS2 curriculum

This Upper KS2 map shows the big picture. For a closer look at exactly what happens in each session, use the Year 5 and Year 6 pages below.

Year 5 detailed map

See how the Autumn and Spring Big Rock Blues sessions and the Summer It Ain’t Easy Funk project combine warm-ups, Rock/Funk dance, Rhythms 1–4, note values, Rainbow Dots, Weekly Drum Routine, Musical Morse Code, harmony and listening into a clear Upper KS2 route.

Open Year 5 music map

Year 6 detailed map

Explore the term-by-term Motown, Disco and 80s Pop projects, including Motown grooves, Disco four-on-the-floor, 80s Pop ballad work, advanced rhythm “engines”, Minor Pentatonic and interval games, plus listening and retrieval tasks that prepare pupils for secondary music.

Open Year 6 music map