Students have completed their first music unit which focused on beat, rhythm, and meter. Students in grade levels 1-4 have been working hard developing their music literacy and ability to read rhythms in duple meter (meter of 4). Students in kindergarten have been exploring rhythm and how it relates to steady beat through exploring and moving. We've also had lots of fall fun with "Autumn Is Here", "Pass the Pumpkin'" and "There was an Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything At All" - using the story to develop our music with singing and instruments. All students in each grade level are exploring the many elements of music that include listening, singing, moving, creating, dancing, and playing a variety of instruments. While each grade level is learning many aspects of music each day they come to class, each grade has a specific learning focus.
In our first 9 weeks unit, students focused primarily on beat and rhythm development. In the second 9 weeks, students will focus primarily on tonal, pitch, and singing voice development.
Looking ahead... Here are the music learning focuses for the second nine weeks of school.
Kindergarten: Rhythm development, iconic notation, improvisation and creation
First Grade: Singing and tonal skills through exploring high and low pitch, echoing, identifying same vs. different, and exploring singing technique
Second Grade: Singing and tonal development through exploring pitch, solfege, and echoing solfege patterns, early tonal/pitch literacy. Second graders have also been preparing a song to perform for our Veterans at our school's Veteran's Day breakfast.
Third Grade: The Music Alphabet, Identifying Lines and Spaces, Identifying note names, Singing and tonal development through solfege exercises
Fourth Grade: Recorder playing, singing voice development, concert preparation
