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
Yearly overview:
Music progression document:
progression doc revised march 2025.pdf
Adaptive teaching in music:
rsm music adaptive teaching mat.pdf
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 Term
We have been super busy over Autumn term musically. Our year groups have thrown themselves into the music curriculum and embraced the learning based on their topic and units of work.
We began our journey officially as lead primary school for music in Bradford. We have been supporting other schools in their musical journey as well as collaborating with colleagues across the district. The West Yorkshire music hub recognised how we tirelessly work to ensure our children have an exceptional music offer here at Riddlesden. We are excited to see where where lead schools will take us over the year, we do have some exciting things planned in though so watch this space.
We have been busy as a whole school musically taking part in events both within school and wider community.
Our choir have been learning songs that they performed at our school Winter Wonderland. They sounded amazing and really brought the festive cheer to the crowds. They also performed at our local Carols and Christmas Jumper service organised by the local churches. Once again they sang beautifully. One of our year 6 girls performed solo and this moved the congregation to tears. A beautiful evening.
We had our Samba band taster sessions this half term, the children loved learning some Brazillian Samba rhythms. They explored instruments and created sounds in small groups as well as working together in a large group. Even Mrs McGuigan had her groove on and lead the group using whistle chants, something that is new to her too. Next term we will restart our Samba band.
Young Voices Choir have been coming to school early in the morning to practice ready for our participation in Young Voices in February.
They have been learning a selection of songs and dances ready to perform with 9000 other children in Manchester next year. We are very excited and cannot wait until the big day, in the meantime we will continue working hard to practice.
Our year 5's and 6's are now Guiness World Record holders, they went to Bradford live and took part in 2 world record attempts.
We are now part of the record holders for largest body percussion lesson and largest air drumming session. The atmosphere on the day was incredible and the children had the best day. Our year 5's were also given the opportunity to perform their Leap song again for the crowd as midday entertainment, they smashed it just like the pro's they were back in June, taking to stage as easily as they did back then. What a day!
Our Year 5's also had a DJ workshop lead by Ross of Allstars this half term. What a great day exploring a different style of music and creating music.
Spring term
Summer Term