Music Program – grades 1-5

Repertoire guided by age-appropriate skills

The music program at ISP provides a survey of music from around the world through immersion in ensemble music repertoire, improvisation, composition, and movement skills. From first grade to fifth, every piece of repertoire and musical genre is chosen for a specific musical or movement elemental concept. Classes are designed for every student to attempt and internalize the concepts which make up points along a grade-level spiraling skill set. The genres include Renaissance court and country music, Western orchestral art music, interactive computer music programming, folk music and dance traditions from around the world, English and American folk music and play party games, and musical language pieces- poems, stories or folk tales to be accompanied by a composed sound carpet.

Presentation & Participation

In music class new elements are often presented through a game or kinesthetic primer – a clapping or body percussion pattern to be detected, a solfege pitch sequence, a folk-dance step, meter conducting activity, or a beat-passing game around a circle. Once students have practiced the initial activity, they are invited to amplify the technique on an acoustic instrument, providing rhythmic or harmonic accompaniment to the song. They quickly notice that the skills they acquired through participation and muscle memory are directly applicable to an instrument technique.

Spiraled Musical Concepts & Skills

Learning is cumulative from 1st through 5th grade. The following grade-specific concepts and skills are introduced in the grade listed, then continued and practiced at higher levels in subsequent grades.

First grade

Children entering first grade have already experienced the basic elements of music through speaking, singing, moving, playing games, and exploring instruments. The next step is naming the elements they have been working with and learning to set aside their personal musical agendas for the benefit of the whole group. Concepts and skills that are introduced include:

  • Rhythm: Hearing, naming, understanding and expressing beat versus rhythm in a variety of ways (patting, clapping, snapping, gesturing, moving, walking, playing on instruments); reading, writing and vocalizing quarter notes, eighth note pairs, quarter rests, and half notes; reading & writing in 2/4 meter; experiencing 3/4, 4/4, 6/8.
  • Melody & Harmony. Students learn pitch awareness such as singing in tune, playing and improvising in the pentatonic scale, and playing and understanding drone bass accompaniment. They learn to understand melodic contour (high and low), expression through movement and voice, and to read, write and transcribe sol-mi-la intervals.
  • Form, Expression, Movement & Dance: Activities encourage expressive movement individually and in small groups. Lessons include simple circle and line dances from around the world; movement to aural cues; improvisation to stories, ideas, concepts, or words; binary and ternary form (AB, ABA) and two part canons.
  • Instrumental Ensemble: Basic technique in a variety of pitched and unpitched percussion, instrumental technique (mallet technique, unpitched instrument), timbre recognition, improvisation in C pentatonic, and instrumental ensemble with 2-3 independent parts

Second grade new concepts and skills include:

  • Rhythm:Rhythmic Ostinati – Unison & Layered parts; 4, 8, 16 beat pattern memory; reading, writing, and transcribing sixteenth notes, whole notes, whole rests; Traditional Counting (1+2+3+4+); reading and orchestrating rhythmic scores; meter – duple and triple; upbeat
  • Melody and Harmony: Full pentatonic scale-singing, playing and improvising. Exploration of pentatonic modes- beginning on la and re; reading, writing, and transcribing Do-Re-Mi Sol-La intervals; 2&3 part canons
  • Form, Expression, Movement and Dance: Basic group choreography with emphasis on form. Basic folk dance steps and vocabulary; basic dance steps; group dance composition using known vocabulary; Rondo Form
  • Instrumental Ensemble: Cross-malletting on barred instruments; C Pentatonic improvisation exploration and composition; 8 beat rhythmic and melodic sequences in C pentatonic; ensemble pieces with 3-4 layered parts

Third grade new concepts and skills include:

  • Rhythm: The conscious understanding of meter (2/4/,3/4, 6/8, 4/4 time) and the performance of music with multiple rhythmic textures; reading, writing, and transcribing dotted half, dotted quarter, triplets; meter – Reading & Writing in duple and triple, compound duple
  • Melody and Harmony: Singing in two and three parts; transposition of pentatonic melodies; melodic notation through recorder study; Do and la modal Pentatonic improvisation and transposition; complex pentatonic melodies; transcription of Do,-Re-Me Sol-La-Do’ (Full Pentatonic); treble clef staff notation; transposition between C – F- G Pentatonic; canon singing and playing in 3 parts
  • Form, Expression, Movement and Dance: Naming concepts of weight, level, direction, and duration; folk dances with more complicated steps; creative movement solutions; forms – Call & Response, Question and Answer; repeats and 1st and 2nd endings; crescendo and decrescendo
  • Instrumental Ensemble: Continued ensemble experiences on pitched and unpitched percussion instruments. Begin soprano recorder study. Instrumental improvisation in C F and G pentatonic & la pentatonic. Ensemble pieces with 6-8 independent parts. Recorder fingerings – based on Treble clef notation – C A G E sequence

Fourth grade new concepts and skills include:

  • Rhythm: Reading, writing of all basic duration values. Introduce notated syncopation. Continue development of rhythmic improvisation. Accents; Reading, writing, and transcribing syncopation; Meter: 6/4
  • Melody and Harmony: Review pentatonic scale in various tonal centers. Learn pieces and improvise in Hexatonic and Modal scales, (Aeolian, Dorian, etc.) through voice, recorder, barred instruments. Major and minor Pentatonic improvisation; translate from Solfege to traditional notation; treble cleff staff notation – full staff; keys & key signatures: C F G; Canon singing and playing in 4 parts
  • Form, Expression, Movement and Dance:Group choreography focusing on musical forms (Rondo and canon). Dance composition
  • Instrumental Ensemble: Continue recorder proficiency in both reading and improvising. Increasingly challenging mallet work on xylophones. Composing sound carpets and accompaniment to folk tales using timbre and modal qualities; C hexatonic improvisations

Fifth grade new concepts and skills include:

  • Rhythm: Meter – Mixed meters, Complex meters, Additive meters, Polyrhythms
  • Melody and Harmony:Improvisation in modes of the diatonic scale, improvisation over I-V chords; Treble cleff staff notation – full staff; Bass Clef staff notation; Key signatures – Entire circle of 5ths – All major keys and relative minors; First and second inversions of triads; Blues scale; Recorder consort music
  • Form, Expression, Movement and Dance: Group choreography assignments. More challenging folk dances in a variety of meters and styles. Basic dance steps – forms, sequences and styles. Group dance composition that reinforce musical form and style. Form: Theme and Variations. Tempo, Dynamics, Articulations
  • Instrumental Ensemble: Continued recorder proficiency. Add upper register soprano recorder. Begin Alto Recorder. Combine singing, movement, drama, and instrumental work to create original artistic expressions

Learn about our specialist teachers at intlschool.org/specialists.

Click here for an article about Peter Musselman and the ISP music program.