• Pitch: Discover and practice pentatonic (five-tone) and later diatonic (major scale) music using simple melodies and/or melodic patterns.  Learn and use absolute pitch names ABCDEFG on the treble staff.
• Rhythm: ¾ Time Signature, dotted half note

Unit 2: Performance Skills: 

• Tuneful singing
• Playing instruments (percussion and recorder)
• Movement/dance

Unit 3: Listening and Analysis: 

• Form (Call/Response, 12-Bar Blues)
• Music Vocabulary (tempo and dynamics)
• Evaluating Performances, Instruments Families (Identification/Classification)

Unit 4: Musical Contexts: Different focus at each grade level

• Connections to History (Composers, Styles of Music)
• Connections to Culture (Patriotic Music, Music of other countries)
• Connections to other disciplines (Dance, visual arts, math, literature)

Unit 5: Creativity: (Personal application of literacy and performance skills)

• Improvisation
• Composition
• Artistic Synthesis (incorporate movement, literature, and visual art)

Students will enhance performance skills by learning multiple parts (3-4 parts) arrangements (pitched and unpitched percussion) to familiar songs. Additionally, students synthesize performance and music literacy skills by learning to play the soprano recorder. This experience applies and develops multiple elements of musicianship at once and serves as an introduction to performance on another instrument family, the woodwinds.

Music creativity is explored through the above performance and literacy units as students improvise and compose their own music. In third grade, students take composition skills to the next level by applying a combination of different skills (note reading/identification on the musical staff, musical form, all known rhythms) to create larger original compositions, usually to be played on their recorders. Creativity also happens as they arrange familiar songs, choosing their own instrumentation (percussion and recorder) and incorporate original poetry or other literature as part of the performance. These activities are in line with the Orff-Schulwerk approach. 

Throughout the year, students will discover how repertoire and concepts connect with the history of music, including famous musicians/composers, styles of music, music from other countries and how music is related to other areas of learning and culture.  Students will continue to build their music vocabulary to describe what they hear using appropriate musical terminology.