Music
Welcome to the music page of our website. My name is Mrs McGuigan and I am the music lead here at school. At Riddlesden we are passionate about music so we ensure our curriculum is exciting, engaging and innovative. We are raising musical aspirations and inspiring pupils to pursue musical opportunities should they choose to. We are lucky enough to have our own music studio where children can immerse themselves in everything musical during their lessons, with a variety of instruments at their fingertips.
In the words of Louis Armstrong "Music is life itself"
Our music curriculum is designed to incorporate 3 main areas, they are:
- Curriculum music
- Instrumental and vocal lessons and ensembles
- Musical events and opportunities
Although our music curriculum is bespoke to us we are guided by the National Curriculum, The Nation Plan for Music Education and The Music Model Curriculum.
We work closely with the West Yorkshire Music Hub taking advantage of participating in various performances both vocally and instrumentally across the year as well as having Mr Barber an amazing music teacher from music services one day a week in school teaching guitars and an innovative new digital music programme with our year 6 children.
Foundation Strategy:
foundation strategy 2024 2025.pdf
Music progression document:
progression doc revised march 2025.pdf
Adaptive teaching in music:
rsm music adaptive teaching mat.pdf
Yearly overview:
Music action plan:
music action plan updated 2025 1 .pdf
Here at Riddlesden we have our very own bespoke music studio that allows our children to fully immerse themselves in music surrounded by all the instruments they could need. As well as teaching our music curriculum in here we also offer a number of wider curriculum music experiences in here.
Autumn 2
Autumn 2 was a busy half term musically!
Our peri teacher Mr Barber continued his weekly guitar lessons for year 4 and his digital technology music lessons with year 6, the children are flourishing in both of these classes
Year 5 took part in the Swing Low project, celebrating the history of black music in Bradford, after some weeks of learning in the classroom they attended a big sing event at St Georges Hall singing with Colin Williams and his world famous Celebration Choir. The children had a wonderful day and a unique experience, one they will treasure forever. We are also excited to hear Colin will be visiting us in school for some follow up work next half term.
Year 4 have begun a year long project with The Royal Ballet and Opera. We have been chosen to represent primary schools at an event next Summer as part of the City of Culture celebrations, we attended an interactive version of the Magic Flute at Victoria Hall in Saltaire and we even did an interview for ITV, talking about what culture and music means to us. The interview will be screened in January. We were also lucky enough to meet some of the stars of the RBO and chat to them about their experiences as singers and performers. Our project will continue throughout the year.
We held a drumming club this half term. The children were excited to learn all about rhythm and beat as well as learning some simple notation. Each week we practiced our chair drumming skills, drumming along to well known songs and by the last week we were creating our own rhythms, notating them and playing them. We even had a demonstration from a drummer and got to play on a drum kit ourselves.
Year 5 were lucky enough to have a DJ and rap experience day. All Stars came to visit us and worked with year 5 through out the day teaching DJ techniques and how to create lyrics and turn them into rap songs. The children had a wonderful experience.
We finished the half term off with our choir performing at the beautiful annual Barn Service usually held at Riddlesden Hall. However this year Riddlesden Hall were unable to hold it due to adverse weather conditions, so we transformed our school hall with fairy lights and candles and we welcomed the community in and held the annual barn service right here in school. The choir performed wonderfully, alongside a choir from East Morton primary school. Everyone raised the roof singing traditional carols together. A wonderful evening was had by all.
Spring term
We began Spring Term by celebrating some achievements in guitar club. The children who have small group lessons are making great progress and passing through the grades in music. Well done to our most recent award winners.
We have also begun our exciting work with the Royal Ballet and Opera House. Our Year 4 children are going to be spending the next few weeks working with professionals from RBO which will culminate in us being part of a performance with an audience of 2000 people in June. This is part of the Bradford 2025 City of Culture collaborations and we are very excited to see where this journey will take us.
The children had a session with Matt our musical director from the RBO. We spent the morning practising a song that has been written especially for us and we will sing it to an audience of over 2000 people in June. We are very excited.
