Objectives for the week of October 21, 2013

Kindergarten

• I can explore using my head voice.
• I can move expressively to music.

First Grade

• I can explore highs and lows in my voice.
• I can move expressively to music.

Second Grade and Primary Montessori

• I can sing using my head voice.
• I can move expressively to music.

Third Grade

• I can echo rhythmic patterns (eighth notes and quarter notes).
• I can decode rhythmic patterns (eighth notes and quarter notes).

Fourth Grade, Fifth Grade, and Intermediate Montessori

• I can play B, A, and G on the recorder.
• I can count quarter notes and half notes.

Looking forward to a great week! This week I will begin implementing many of the strategies I learned last week at the Montana Music Conference from Dr. John Feierabend. In younger grades we will be focusing on First Steps in Music skills, including pitch and movement exploration. In older grades we will start applying Conversational Solfege concepts, a method that focuses on learning music in the same way we learn to read: 

During the first five years of life we are busy making aural sense out of the complex labyrinth of language.  After achieving a certain level of conversational competence we enter school and begin a structured reading and writing curriculum. A similar process takes place when one studies a foreign language first at a conversational level.  The development of ear comprehension precedes reading, writing or grammatical structure education.  These models of learning can be applied to the development of music literacy.