Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Welcome!

Welcome to my music room blog. This is where I will post information about events happening in school as well as what we are studying in the music room. I want to start off by explaining what we will be focusing on in the music classroom this year.

For our students in grades K-1 I am using a curriculum by John M. Frierabend called First Steps in Music. The curriculum is based on folk and traditional songs and rhymes because of their ability to connect generations and because of their natural melodic expressiveness, natural flow of the language, and texts filled with wonder.

The curriculum is based on early childhood research related to the development of:
1) Music intelligence;
2) Singing skills;
3) Sensitivity to the beat and beat groups;
4) Expressive movement;
5) Musical memory;
6) Preferences; and
7) Neurological connections

Goals for Children
To experience activities that will prepare children for the development of:
1) Accurate rhythmic skills;
2) Accurate singing skills; and
3) Sensitivity to the expressive qualities in music.






For our students in grades 2-5 we will be focusing on John M Frierabend's Conversational Solfege. The curriculum focuses on learning music and notation the same way you would a foreign language. One should learn with his/her ears before learning with his/her eyes. Once you have learned with your ears you can begin to learn with your eyes.

It is a 12 step process to music literacy

Step 1 Readiness Rote- Songs and rhymes are learned by rote that contain rhythm and/or tonal content, which will be studied later.

Step 2 Conversational Solfege Rote- Rhythm syllables and/or tonal syllables are introduced.

Step 3- Conversational Solfege Decode-Familiar- This stage serves as an evaluation to see if students have bonded rhythm and/or tonal patterns with the correct syllables.

Step 4- Conversational Solfege Decode-Unfamiliar- This stage serves as an evaluation to see if students have bonded rhythm and/or tonal patterns with the correct syllables and can generalize those syllables to unfamiliar patterns, songs, and rhymes.

Step 5- Conversational Solfege Create- This stage develops the ability to think original musical thoughts.

Step 6- Reading Rote- During this stage, students are introduced to notation symbols.

Step 7- Reading Decode- Familiar- This stage serves as an evaluation to see if students have bonded the notation for rhythm and/or tonal patterns with the correct syllables.

Step 8- Reading Decode- Unfamiliar- This stage serves as an evaluation to see if students have bonded the notation for rhythm and/or tonal patterns with the correct syllables and can generalize that knowledge to unfamiliar patterns, songs, and rhymes.

Step 9- Writing Rote- During this stage, students learn to write notation.

Step 10- Writing Decode- Familiar- During this stage, students engage both conversational decoding skills and writing decoding skills.

Step 11- Writing Decode- Unfamiliar- During this stage, students engage both conversational decoding skills and writing decoding skills.

Step 12- Writing Create- This skill requires students to conversationally create through inner hearing and then writing decode by transferring their musical thoughts into notation.

With this curricular resource as our foundation we will have a great year learning and growing through music. I look forward to working with all of the students at Lowell and Geneva this year!



*This was primarily taken from the books Conversational Solfege and First Steps in Music by John M. Frierabend