Music Curriculum

Junior Kindergarten
Students begin to use icons or invented symbols to represent musical sounds and ideas. They can identify a wide variety of sounds, and use the voice to speak, chant, and sing. They start using body movements to respond to dynamics and tempo as well as body percussion to demonstrate awareness of beat and rhythm. Students also begin learning skills to improvise simple instrumental accompaniments to songs.

Kindergarten
Students are able to identify and describe basic elements of music (e.g. high/low, fast/slow, loud/soft, beat). They can sing age-appropriate songs from memory, echo short melodic phrases, and create accompaniments using the voice or a variety of classroom instruments. Students can use developmentally appropriate movements in response to music from various cultures, genres, and styles. Students are able to compose their own rhythmic patterns using quarter notes, half notes, whole notes, and rests.

First Grade
Students begin to read, write, and perform simple patterns of rhythm and pitch. They identify simple musical forms (e.g. phrase, ABA, echo). They also identify common instruments visually and aurally in a variety of music. Students can sing with accuracy age-appropriate songs from memory and improvise simple rhythmic accompaniments using body percussion and classroom instruments. Students are able to compose their own rhythmic patterns using eighth notes, quarter notes, half notes, whole notes, and rests.

Second Grade
Students can read, write, and perform simple rhythmic patterns using eighth notes, quarter notes, half notes, dotted half notes, whole notes, and rests. They can read, write, and perform simple patterns of pitch using solfege and notes on the Treble Clef. They learn how to identify ascending/descending melody as wells as even/uneven rhythmic patterns. Students begin identifying both visually and aurally different instruments according to their families. Students continue to sing age-appropriate songs from memory and begin to play rhythmic ostinatos on classroom instruments.  

Third Grade
Students continue to read, write, and perform rhythmic patterns using a variety of notes, rests, and pitches on the Treble Clef (e.g. by using the Soprano Recorder). Students begin identifying melody, rhythm, harmony and timbre in a variety of music. Students can create developmentally appropriate movements to express pitch, tempo, form and dynamics. Students are able to describe how specific musical elements communicate particular ideas or moods in music. Students can also describe the way in which sound is produced on various instruments.

Fourth Grade
Students continue to understand concepts of reading, writing, and performing rhythmic and pitch patterns using the Soprano Recorder, especially diatonic scales and songs in major keys. They begin to read, write, and perform sixteenth notes, dotted notes, and syncopation. They can describe music according to its elements, using the terminology of music. They sing and use classroom instruments to a varied repertoire of music from diverse cultures, including rounds, descants, and songs with ostinatos, alone and with others. Students explain the relationship between music and events in history, and can identify music from diverse cultures and time periods.

September 2009