MUSIC CLASS NEWS

In music class your child takes part in an active learning experience which includes singing, playing, moving, reading, writing, listening to, creating, and analyzing music.  Through these activities your child acquires knowledge about music and develops skills which enhance other academic disciplines and can help him/her enjoy making music now and in the future.

3rd Grade

What an awesome group of 3rd graders!  These students can now read quarter, eighth, half, and whole notes.  They read rhythms using quarter, half, and whole rests and are quickly preparing sixteenth notes.  They know the following music vocabulary:  pentatonic, introduction, interlude, coda.  They can identify a piece of music by its form.

In the  3rd nine weeks we will continue to add to our pitch ladder, sight-read melodies from the staff, and concentrate on the proper playing of our percussion instruments.

Some compositions that we have recently studied are "The Twelfth Street Rag" and "Jazz Pizzicato".

4th Grade

4th graders are encouraged to bring their recorders to every class.  Bringing supplies to class is an expectation for all fourth graders and we are using recorders almost daily. 

4th graders have recently added the pitch low d to their recorder repertoire.  We can read combination rhythms using eighth and sixteenth notes. One of our favorite compositions studied in the last 9 weeks was "Sleigh Ride" by Leroy Anderson. In the 3rd nine weeks we will be reviewing our treble clef notation in preparation for playing songs from the "Recorder Karate" program.  We will add the pitches fa and ti to our pitch ladder.

We will continue to improve our playing skills on barred instruments and begin the preparation of syncopation.                      

 5th GRADE

5th grade students  concentrated on rondo form and patriotic music in the 2nd 9 weeks.  They wrote parodies based on familiar tunes.  We reviewed sixteenth notes and combination rhythms, studied the key of G major using f#, and attempted to create our own rhythmic rondos.  We also studied the composition "Sleigh Ride".

We have now started an instrument unit, studying the four families of instruments in the symphony orchestra.  We've viewed "A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" by Benjamin Britten.  We've experimented with strings to see what is necessary to make a stringed instrument work properly.  We will continue to study the instruments of the orchestra with students completing a final project--making their very own instrument!    Middle school performers will be presenting demonstration lessons for us as the students get ready to select courses for next year.

Students have been encouraged to start collecting materials to make their instruments.  Before throwing anything away--take a look!  Could it be part of the best homemade instrument ever created by a 5th grader?  Instruction sheets with requirements and deadlines will be coming home about mid-nine weeks.