Music

Kindergarten serves as the foundation for musical understanding and provides a pathway to future music instruction. Students will learn musical knowledge, skills, and understanding through singing, playing instruments, listening, and moving. Students identify people who create music and examine how music is a part of personal and community events. Creative ideas will be shared while students recognize and express personal responses evoked by musical experiences.

Instruction in first grade emphasizes the language and production of music and focuses on the continued development of skills in singing, playing instruments, listening, moving, and responding to music. Emphasis is placed on performing simple rhythms and developing aural skills related to pitch, musical form, and instrument identification. Students investigate how people participate in music in everyday life. Students identify collaboration and communication skills in music and describe personal ideas and emotions evoked by music. Students continue to explore the concept of a creative process to develop music ideas.

Students continue developing musical skills and concepts in singing, playing instruments, listening, performing, responding with expression, creating/composing, and moving with a focus on fine motor skills. Emphasis is placed on ensemble playing, notating pitches and rhythms, and identifying instruments. Students investigate how people experience music in everyday life and explore how music evokes personal ideas and emotions.

Building mastery in the areas of music literacy, including singing, playing instruments, listening, moving, and creating/composing music is emphasized in third grade. In particular, students develop skills for appropriate singing habits and instrumental ensemble performance. Musical understanding through the study of rhythm, musical form, and melodic notation. Students explore music from different periods of music history and reflect on ways that music has value to people and communities.

Fourth grade learning emphasizes a deeper understanding of musical concepts during which students expand on the use of a creative process as they reflect on the process, create music, and revise work based on feedback. Advanced techniques in singing and instrumental techniques, as well as an expansion of understanding rhythmic and harmonic techniques, and using a system for improved melodic and rhythmic sight-reading is also explored. Students use an expanding music vocabulary to explain personal preferences for musical works and performances.

Fifth Grade serves as a synthesis of all previously learned music knowledge and concepts. Students use increasingly complex rhythms and meters to continue to read, write, and compose music. They develop choral skills, including singing in two- and three part harmony. Students explore and perform a variety of music styles and develop personal criteria to be used for describing and analyzing musical performances.