“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.”
(Plato)

Music has the potential to make a significant contribution to children’s development, increasing confidence and self-esteem, developing leadership, promoting team working, concentration and problem-solving skills, and developing identity and improving social cohesion within the school and wider community.  It is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. A high-quality music education engages and inspires pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement.  As pupils progress, they develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon.

Music is an integral and well-resourced part of life at Woodstock Primary. Music lessons are fun and inspiring, engaging the children with songs, lyrics and movement. We want children to feel able and reflective and expressive, developing their own appreciation of music with the opportunities we provide as a school.  All children are actively encouraged and given the opportunity to learn to play a musical instrument whether it be within music lessons, or within the weekly Years 3 & 4 music and ukulele lessons delivered by a visiting music specialist.  Musical opportunities in school include weekly class music lessons, composer of the term, weekly singing Collective Worship, Lunch-time music club and taking part in Young Voices.  Further children have opportunity to take part in a variety of performances both within and beyond school including singing at community events and national events such as Young Voices.

We use the Charanga scheme of work which offers a topic-based approach to support children’s learning in music.  The scheme offers a practical, structured resource bank for teaching music and contains lessons, songs, warm ups and a range of other musical activities that support every aspect of musical learning in the primary school. A steady progression overview which links where possible to curriculum themes has been devised to ensure consistent musical development across each phase. By using Charanga and the specialist music teaching within Years 3 & 4 as the basis of our music curriculum, we can ensure that they are fulfilling the aims for musical learning stated in the National Curriculum.