Fine Arts Icon Music education enables all learners to explore, create, perceive, and communicate thoughts, images, and feelings through music. These experiences are unique and essential and play a significant role in students' lifelong development as educated citizens. Shared experiences in music also significantly contribute to the development of a healthier society through activities that respect and reflect the diversity of human experiences.

Music education enables students to interact with sound--simultaneously engaging mind, body, and spirit--through creating, performing, listening to, and responding to music. Music offers one of the most effective ways of connecting thinking and feeling and provides a way of learning that effectively integrates the cognitive, psychomotor, and affective domains.

Music education, as envisioned in this curriculum, allows students to acquire music literacy skills that contribute to their development as educated citizens. It provides students with opportunities to:

The Music K to 7 curriculum develops the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that form the basis for music education from Kindergarten to Grade 12. This IRP has been designed to make music accessible to all students while encouraging the aesthetic, intellectual, social, emotional, physical, and career development of each individual.

Curriculum Organizers

The prescribed learning outcomes for Music K to 7 are grouped under the following curriculum organizers:

Structure

The organizer Structure focusses on providing opportunities for students to create, listen to, and perform music and demonstrate their understanding of the expressive and physical properties of rhythm and melody. Sounds become music when the rhythm or melody is shaped into larger structures or forms according to the principles of design: unity, variety, repetition, emphasis, and pattern. Familiarity with these principles and with common forms is essential to understanding the structure of music and its relationship to other art forms.

In the elementary years, students experience the structure of music through a wide variety of opportunities for singing, playing, and movement. Initially, they learn to sing in tune, individually or in groups, from memory or using simple notation. By exploring pitch patterns, students learn to discriminate higher and lower sounds, and develop concepts of key, scale, and tonal centre. As their skills develop, they learn to sing or play simple ostinati to accompany known songs or to maintain parts in a round or harmony. They also learn to keep a beat and to differentiate rhythmic pulse within a range of simple and complex rhythms. This exploration and skill development forms the basis for later musical expression.

Thoughts, Images, and Feelings

Music uses the expressive elements of rhythm, melody, texture, dynamics, tempo, timbre, and articulation to represent thoughts, images, and feelings. It is through expressing and evoking thoughts, images, and feelings that music is given meaning. Students learn to understand and appreciate this aspect of music as they create, listen, and perform.

In the elementary years, students respond to and express music in a variety of ways. Some link music experiences with events in their lives, others visualize using their imagination, and others respond on a purely emotional level. By engaging in a range of music experiences and by having opportunities to share their responses with their peers, students learn to understand the diversity of thoughts, images, and feelings that are evoked by and expressed through music. As students expand their knowledge of music in this way, they begin to develop a set of aesthetic values upon which to make personal choices in music. They can then apply this knowledge to their own music compositions to communicate personal ideas.

Context

The organizer Context provides students with opportunities to participate in and develop a sense of community and their place within it through music experiences. Students learn that a sense of community is gained through meaningful interaction with others. They also learn that giving and receiving are integral to the transformation and balance of the community.

Learning within the context of self and community includes opportunities to:

  • participate in various roles related to music activities (e.g., soloist, accompanist, ensemble member, leader, follower)
  • respect, encourage, support, and honour the contributions of self and others in music activities
  • share music in various settings with other classes, the whole school, and the local community as performers, participants, and audience
  • explore careers related to music Students also learn that music is created, communicated, perceived, and responded to in historical and cultural contexts. Through the study of these contexts, students experience the richness and diversity of the human spirit. This creates a sense of self-worth and connectedness to other human beings throughout the world.

    Students enter the elementary years with an understanding of music in relation to their own contexts. Through exposure to music that represents the diversity of the community, students can broaden their understanding of and appreciation for a range of music experiences.

    Music Kindergarten to Grade 12 Objectives

    The prescribed learning outcomes for all music curricula have been developed to address the objectives for learning in music from Kindergarten to Grade 12. The Music Kindergarten to Grade 12 Objectives chart shows the relationship of these objectives to the curriculum organizers. Instruction and assessment should address these objectives at each grade level.

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    Maintained by: Fine Arts Coordinator

    Revised: July 8, 1998

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