Music Curriculum

Grades three, four, and five music classes use an eclectic curriculum. The overall philosophy is “participation by all students through singing, playing, moving, listening, creating and writing”. Students make music their own through songs that help them learn about music and relate what they have learned to their everyday life. Well-known folk songs and songs to commemorate significant events are utilized as well. The Orff method is used at all grade levels. This method teaches music through movement, improvisation, singing, and ensemble playing (Xylophones, Glocks, and Metallaphones).

Grade 3 Grade three does a great deal of singing. Round singing and partner songs develop student’s ears for music and prepare them for harmony and part-singing in years to come.

Grade 4 Grade four development of part-singing begins with rhythmic chants, ostinatos, partner songs, and descants.

Grade 5 Grade five concentrates on 2-3-part harmony. The results of this are seen and heard in chorus performances that occur during the year.

Music reading skills are taught to sharpen visual and aural perception while reinforcing specific skills such as patterning, sequencing, internalization, and interpretation of symbols. Our fifth-grade students keep a music theory notebook in which these concepts are noted and used for review purposes.

The classroom teachers are encouraged to utilize the music teacher as a resource to assist with the development of thematic units as well as to support specific curriculum topics.

Grade four and five students also have the opportunity to participate in our Instrumental Music program. A variety of group lessons featuring woodwinds, percussion, and brass are offered on a weekly basis. Instrumental students participate in the beginning or fifth-grade band as well. A String program is offered before school on a limited basis to interested students in grades four and five.