Music+Standards

National Association for Music Education Standards

//The following is a list of MENC Music Standards that we will be achieving in our classroom throughout the year//:

1. Singing, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music.
 * Students will have the opportunity to sing together in our classroom during music time on our morning mat, during transition times (moving from one activity to another), and at the music center.

2. Performing on instruments, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music.
 * Students will have the opportunity to play a variety of instruments in our classroom, supplied from the music center and by the teacher for our morning routines. Also, students will be able to create instruments using a variety of different materials.

3. Improvising melodies, variations, and accompaniments.
 * Students will have many opportunities throughout the year to be creative with music. Our music center will provide an environment for children to improvise and create music.

4. Composing and arranging music within specified guidelines.
 * We will have specific music lessons in our curriculum which will give students the chance to arrange music.

5. Reading and notating music.
 * Students will learn to read the basic symbols of music primarily through practicing on our class xylophones. Children learn at first to connect the colors on the xylophone with the notes that they see. The symbols and the notes will be taught in lessons integrated into our curriculum.

6. Listening to, analyzing, and describing music.
 * Within our music center, students will be able to listen to a variety of music from different cultures and openly discuss and describe what they hear and how the music makes them feel. In our classroom, students will be expected to engage and express their understanding of the music they hear.

7. Evaluating music and music performances.
 * Students will have ample opportunities to share their opinion of the music that they hear. We often use language arts as an opportunity for children to write down and illustrate what they thought about the music that they heard, for instance, during center time. Was it rough sounding? Loud? Calming? etc. At the end of the year, students will hear the local symphony and be able to critique what they hear with the help of a guided workshop.

8. Understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts.
 * In our classroom, students will see that music is threaded into everything that we do. From educational songs about rhyming during Language Arts to songs about adding and subtracting during Math time, music will be a part of all disciplines in our class. They will see that we can create colorful crafts to dance with and to represent the music that we hear. They will have the opportunity to see local musical theater for our field trip this year. They will also see how music motivates as a background setting during other activities.

9. Understanding music in relation to history and culture.
 * One of our favorite units during the year is when we study African American culture throughout history. In this unit, student will get to hear music from different time periods throughout history. They will learn songs from cultural songs that date back three hundred years as well as modern songs of today. This is just one example of how children in our classroom will learn about music in relation to history and culture.