• Course Description

    In each unit in fourth grade, students have the opportunity to create, present, respond to, and connect with a variety of musical forms. They imitate, echo, read, and create music and learn to use musical vocabulary to describe and respond to music. Students will explore with dance, rhythm, vocal music, instrumental music, and music notation. Students will consider what musical forms and dances are appropriate for different cultural celebrations and develop a program of music for a public event.

    Grade Level(s): Fourth Grade

    Related Priority Standards (State &/or National):  Missouri Fine Arts Music Standards

    Essential Questions

    • How can we create new dances that other people can learn easily?
    • How do we make sure everyone can participate?
    • How do musicians decide what ideas they want to express in music?
    • How does a group learn to perform together and agree how they want to sound?
    • How can we predict how music will sound by reading music notation?
    • How do we decide when our performance sounds the way that it should?
    • How do musicians make creative decisions about how they want their performance to sound?
    • How do musicians practice to make their performance sound more like what they intended?

    Enduring Understandings/Big Ideas

    • Folk dances from different cultures often have similar elements. 
    • Dancing together helps groups of people connect with each other and helps individuals feel included in large groups.
    • Familiar forms of dances make it easier for everyone to participate in musical celebrations.
    • People can create new dances by making new combinations of familiar steps.
    • Musicians who play together have to listen to each other while playing their individual instruments.
    • Rhythm helps musicians play different parts in unison.
    • Musical notation records pitch, rhythm, and expression.
    • Musicians reading musical notation can sing through a piece and anticipate what they will need to work on in practice.
    • Before we try to judge the quality of a performance, we have to agree on our preferences and criteria. Music helps groups of people set the tone for their celebrations. Different kinds of music are important at different celebrations. 
    • Musicians listen to each other and agree how they want their music to sound. They practice together to improve.

    Course-Level Scope & Sequence (Units &/or Skills)

    Unit 1 - Complex Folk Dance

    • Students will demonstrate locomotor and non locomotor movements to music alone, with a partner, or as a group by performing more complex folk dances.                                                         
    • Students will experience movement through a varying musical form (AB, ABA, Rondo form) 
    • Students will perform movement from a variety of cultures.

    Unit 2 - 3-4 Part Instrumental Piece

    • Students will perform a variety of instrumental music with melodies, chords and layered accompaniment, simple and crossover bordun, ostinato on percussion instruments with proper technique.
    • Students will demonstrate rhythms including 4 16ths notes, whole note, whole rest, and half rest, eighth, two 16ths, and two eighths, by reading standard music notation.
    • Agree on criteria for performance and listen to each other to improve.

    Unit 3 - Read Treble Clef on an Instrument

    • Students will independently identify, read, create, and perform pitches on a treble clef staff with rhythmic notation in duple (quarter note, paired eighth notes, quarter rest, half note, half rest, whole note, whole rest, 4 16th notes, eighth two 16ths, two 16ths eighth), and triple meter (dotted quarter, dotted quarter rest, 3 eighth notes, quarter eighth, eighth quarter, eighth rest).
    • Students will sing and play instruments from musical notation.
    • Students will write musical notation for a created piece of music.

    Unit 4 - Ensemble Singing

    • Students will imitate, echo, read and create using the diatonic scale.
    • Students will sing songs in a wider range and experience major and minor tonalities while singing in 3 parts (ostinato, canons, partner songs) with expressive qualities (dynamics, consonants, open vowels, etc.).
    • Listen and describe the expressive qualities of music. 
    • Agree with a group on how they want their performance to sound and use strategies to improve.

    Course Resources & Materials: TBD

    Date Last Revised/Approved: 2022