Teach weekly
Use the route as a dedicated 30-45 minute music slot with a clear lesson flow.
Year 4 Music Curriculum Map
Structure
How Year 4 music is structured (Rock and Roll focus)
The Standard Curriculum for Year 4 is taught through three terms of six sessions. Pupils spend the year in a 1950s Rock and Roll sound world built around I Love You So.
Each lesson uses around nine short activities that return to warming up, moving in time, pulse, rhythm, notation, time signatures, dynamics, listening and performance.
- Vocal warm-ups, Rock and Roll dance and I Love You So anchor singing and movement.
- Rhythmic Pyramid, Weekly Drum Routine and Musical Morse Code strengthen pulse and rhythm.
- Rainbow Dots, barlines, time signatures and Quickfire Chords make notation practical.
- Dynamics games, listening tasks and band-role clips connect pupils to expressive ensemble work.
Delivery
Weekly lessons or shorter "bursts"
Year 4 can be taught as a full weekly music lesson or split into short bursts of song, dance, rhythm, notation, listening and vocabulary.
Because the I Love You So project holds the route together, staff can adapt lesson length while preserving progression and coverage.
Teach in bursts
Split the same mapped content into songs, listening games, movement, vocabulary and practice moments across the week.
Keep the map
Whether lessons are weekly or split up, the underlying route still gives leaders a coherent progression story.
Standard Curriculum view
What happens across the Year 4 Standard Curriculum?
The Year 4 Standard Curriculum overview shows how the I Love You So project revisits familiar activity types across the 18 sessions while the Rock and Roll content, notation, time signature and dynamics work gradually step up.
Pupils sing, move, drum, listen, decode rhythms and explore band roles so the style becomes practical rather than just historical.
Vocal warm-ups, dance & I Love You So
Pupils move from supported singing and movement to more independent Rock and Roll performance by Summer.
- Vocal Warm Up 1-5
- Dance: Rock and Roll 1-4
- Perform: Rock and Roll and karaoke
Rock and Roll concepts, time signatures & history
Short Learn and Watch segments build the style context, from back-beat and band roles to key artists.
- 1950s Rock and Roll style features
- Time signatures and barlines
- Wanda Jackson, Etta James, Elvis Presley and Little Richard
Pulse, rhythm, Skies and Musical Morse Code
Rhythm games and desk-drumming routines help pupils feel the back-beat, count steadily and decode patterns.
- Rhythmic Pyramid: Pulse
- Weekly Drum Routine 3-4
- Musical Morse Code Level 1
Rainbow Dots 4-5, barlines & Quickfire Chords
Notation, time signatures and chord work appear inside the Rock and Roll route rather than as isolated theory.
- Rainbow Dots 4 and 5
- What Are Barlines? and What is a Time Signature?
- Quickfire Chords variations 4-6
Dynamics, listening games, ensemble & ukulele
Dynamics activities, listening games and optional ukulele links connect expressive control to ensemble performance.
- Roars and Whispers and Shape Shifters
- Music Detective and Critical Listening
- Whole-class ukulele links
Explore the curriculum in your school
Open the pre-curated schemes, preview the activity flow and see whether the route fits your timetable.