1st Grade General Music Class

In this ongoing class, learners will meet once a week to sing, play games, practice hearing, and identifying and reading rhythms. Below are the skills that we work on:

GENERALLY:
- Singing with proper vocal technique
- The difference between beat and rhythm
- Sing tonal patterns using three solfege syllables and their hand signs
- Hearing, identifying, and physicalizing new musical concepts such as rests and relative pitches
- Moving meaningfully to music
- Entrainment to beat
- Dancing!
SPECIFICALLY:
- Identifying, decoding, reading, and creating using so, mi, and la pitch sets
- Identifying, decoding, reading, and creating using quarter notes, eighth notes, and quarter note rests in 2/4 and 4/4 time
- Clapping beat while singing/chanting rhythm
- Performing simple ostinatos
- Useing rehearsal letters to map out song form
- Identifying and reading repeat signs
- Conducting in 2/4 and 4/4 time

We will focus on different styles of music every month, related to the style of music our Musician of the Month is involved in. In each class I have a picture schedule that I share with the students so they can see what we're doing for the class in that day. We will start by performing some kind of vocal or physical warmup, followed by singing. Then we will learn the musical vocabulary of the month's theme and practice them through singing, chanting, dancing, simple percussion exercises, and playing games. We end with the Musician of the Month. Genres of focus are listed below.

September: Latin American
October: Folk/Americana
November: Spiritual/Protest 
December: Musical Theater
January: Chinese Traditional
February: Western Classical
March: Afro-Caribbean
April: Jazz/Blues
May: Pop/Rock
June: Student Choice

Week of Sept. 6-9: Keeping a steady beat
Week of Sept. 12-16: Learning a Spanish rhyme
Week of Sept. 19-23: Latin American dance
Week of Sept. 26-30: Singing and moving with Spanish verbs

The Musician of the Month aims to break down euro-centrism in education by incorporating musicians and styles from diverse backgrounds and abilities. I have successfully used this model in my classroom for 5 years. Often, we are moving, tapping, and dancing along to the music. Sometimes it takes the form of simply watching and listening to a short clip at the end of class. 

 I look forward to learning with you!