Elementary Music (K-5)

Welcome to our elementary music page! I'm Mrs. Orlando, and this is my 5th year teaching here. In addition to teaching music to our Kindergarten through 5th graders, I'm also the band director at Lincoln Meadows to provide our students with more opportunities to explore their musical interests outside of class! I'm so excited to continue building our instrumental program and making music with your students. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to email me: [email protected]

Musically yours,

Mrs. Orlando

Grade Level Instruments & Curriculum Overview

Kindergarten

Concepts include: loud and quiet, keeping a steady beat, moving to music, same and different, learning to read and perform rhythms like quarter notes, eighth notes, and sixteenth notes.

Instruments: piano, boomwhackers, drums, xylophones, other percussion

1st grade

Concepts include: loud and quiet, same and different, keeping a beat review from kindergarten in addition to recognizing instruments by sight and sound, making connections between music and literature, reading and performing more rhythmic values, performing in front of peers, and learning solfege.

Instruments: piano, boomwhackers, drums, xylophones, other percussion

2nd grade

Concepts include: Moving and responding to music, beginning to use solfege to learn pitches on the treble clef, making connections between music and literature, learning and performing more complex rhythms, learning practicing and critical thinking skills, and performing in front of peers.

Instruments: piano, boomwhackers, drums, xylophones, other percussion

3rd grade

Concepts include: reading pitches on the treble clef, learning to practice and refine playing for performance, performing in front of peers, providing and receiving constructive feedback, recognizing instruments by sight and sound, and making connections to literature.

Instruments: Recorder (in Trimester 2), piano, boomwhackers, xylophones, and other percussion

4th grade:

Concepts include: continuing to read and interpret notes and symbols on the treble clef and in sheet music, reading other notation styles, learning about musical structure and theory, learning about form and the "anatomy" of a song, connecting to music in their lives outside of school, making connections between music, history, and literature, and practicing independently.

Instruments: Ukulele (in Trimester 2), piano, boomwhackers, xylophones, and other percussion

5th grade:

Concepts include: continuing to read and interpret more notes and symbols on the treble clef and in sheet music, reading other notation styles, making connections between music, history, and literature, learning more complicated music theory concepts and "anatomy" of a song, learning more about different composers, practicing and refining music independently for performance, and preparing other necessary skills for middle school music.

Instruments: Ukulele (in Trimester 2), piano, boomwhackers, xylophones, and other percussion

Come see what we're doing in music!

In Kindergarten: We're in our piano unit! We're learning about hand positions, where our do-re-mi's go on the piano, and how to track across a page to connect color coded notes to piano stickers to play a song! Students played a song from our green folder to show what they learned.

For our final units of the year, we'll be practicing our same and different listening skills before showing what we learned our final week to see our progress this year and what we need going into 1st grade music!

In 1st grade: This is our instruments and storytelling week! We're focusing on instrument families and how instruments and musical sounds can be used to tell a story, using Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf.

For our final unit of the year, we'll be assessing our 1st grade music skills to see what we learned this year and what we need going into 2nd grade music!

In 2nd grade: This is our composition week. After learning a bit about what composers do, we're spending time creating our own songs! This uses rhythm and pitch skills we've learned and practiced throughout the year, and produces a song playable on many treble clef instruments when we're finished!

For our final units of the year, we'll focus on instrument families and how instruments tell a story before our final week of assessment to cover what we learned this year and what we need going into 3rd grade music!

In 3rd grade: We're wrapping up our final unit of recorder! After this week, we will be learning about composers and composing music ourselves.

For our final week of the year, we'll review what we learned this year and see what we need going into 4th grade music next year!

In 4th and 5th grade: We're learning about composers and music history with various musical periods in Western music. We're also practicing thinking critically about the music we hear and discussing our preferences while comparing different musical eras.

For our final units of the year, we'll be creating a composition together to practice creating our own music before our final week of the year, where we'll review what we learned this year and what we need going into 5th grade music or for the 5th graders, what they'll need for middle school next year!