Our K-2 students experience music through John Feierabend’s First Steps in Music curriculum. During each music class, students will participate in a musical “workout" including the following: 1. Pitch Exploration (vocal warm-up) 2. Fragment Singing (simple vocal responses) 3. Simple Songs (short, repetitive songs that foster independent singing) 4. Arioso (vocal improvisation, creativity, & composition) 5. Movement Exploration (through the Laban themes) 6. Movement for Form/Expression (finger plays & creative movement) 7. Beat Motions (finding the "heart beat" of music in a number of ways) 8. Song Tales (practicing audience behavior while the teacher sings a story) This curriculum is designed to teach children to become: TUNEFUL (to have tunes in their heads and learn to coordinate their voices to sing those tunes) BEATFUL (to feel the pulse of music and how the pulse is grouped into by 2s or 3s) ARTFUL (to be expressive and moved by music) and develop into a musical person.
GRADES 3-4
Once our students are tuneful, beatful, and artful (reinforced at the start of each year), classes consist of 3 components: 1. Doing Music (singing/playing instruments) 2. Music Literacy (using the Conversational Solfege curriculum & Recorder Karate in grade 4) 3. About Music (with a focus on the elements of music)
Students explore music through a variety of instruments including African drums, Orff instruments, and unpitched percussion. They also begin to experience music as a community through folk dancing, hand-clapping games, creative movement, and class compositions.
Fourth grade students participate in a unit of “Recorder Karate” in which they purchase recorders for both at-home and in-school practice. Through this program, students build confidence in their individual musicianship in a variety of ways. Recorder order forms will be sent home with 4th grade students in September.
GRADE 5
Fifth graders will learn all about orchestral music in preparation for our field trip to hear the Brevard Symphony Orchestra perform in February. They will become “instrument experts,” able to identify instruments visually but aurally as well.
Students will also explore the lives and influences behind certain composers’ music. Students will develop their own musical tastes but learn to evaluate and appreciation all music in a number of ways.
GRADE 6
In sixth grade, students stretch their musical knowledge around the world and back through time. Students will explore musical time periods in a number of ways, both performing and experiencing exemplar pieces of the past and creating their own songs in unique historical/cultural styles. Students will also have the opportunity to work collaboratively and improve their rehearsal and performance skills, preparing them to be positively contributing members of middle school music ensembles and beyond!