At Woodford Primary School, pupils gain a firm understanding of what music is through listening, singing, playing, evaluating, analysing, and composing across a wide variety of historical periods, styles, traditions, and musical genres. We are committed to developing a curiosity for the subject, as well as an understanding and acceptance of the value and importance of all types of music, with respect for the role of music. We are committed to ensuring children understand the value and importance of music in the wider community and are able to use their musical skills, knowledge, and experiences to involve themselves in a passion for music, in a variety of different contexts.

The music curriculum ensures pupils have opportunities to sing, listen, play, compose, perform and evaluate. This is embedded in the classroom activities as well as weekly singing assemblies, a variety of concerts and performances, instrumental tuition, and through one of our musical clubs, choir and ensembles. The elements of music are taught so that pupils are able to use correct music vocabulary and understand how music is made, played, appreciated and analysed. Pupils have experience of learning how to play an instrument, from the different instrument groups, including wind, strings, percussion and keyboards. This helps pupils to gain an understanding of creating sounds as well as how to read basic music notation. They also learn how to compose, focusing on different dimensions of music, which in turn feeds their understanding when listening to, composing, playing, or analysing music. Composing or performing using body percussion and vocal sounds is also part of the curriculum, which develops the understanding of musical elements without the added complexity of an instrument. Through using schemes of work such as Charanga, teachers are able to produce inclusive lessons for all children to access the musical curriculum in a fun and engaging way, further promoting a love of learning. Pupils have opportunities to learn instruments through private music tuition, such as piano, violin, guitar, ukulele, woodwind and drums to build upon their own prior musical knowledge.

Whilst in school, pupils have access to a wide variety of musical experiences, which allows them to discover areas of strength, as well as areas they might like to improve upon. The integral nature of music and the learner creates a wide range of skills from which pupils access fundamental skills such as: achievement, self-confidence, communication, interaction with and awareness of others, and self-reflection. This is evident during First access sessions and whole class music performances, in which children have grown in confidence and have had an improved self-esteem as a result of performing alongside others. Music also develops an understanding of culture and history, both in relation to pupils individually, as well as different cultures from across the world. Pupils are able to enjoy music in as many ways as they choose either as listener, creator or performer. They have opportunities to analyse music and gain a deeper understanding of how music is produced. They are taught to sing tunefully and feel a pulse. They have an understanding of how to further develop skills and learn a variety of techniques to improve their performance.