
Developing a Music Appreciation Curriculum for Primary or Elementary School
Music plays a vital role in a child’s development. It stimulates creativity, improves focus, and fosters emotional expression. For primary school students, music appreciation can open the door to a lifelong love of music.
But how do you create an engaging and effective curriculum? Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you design one.
Music plays a vital role in a child’s development. It stimulates creativity, improves focus, and fosters emotional expression. For elementary school students, music appreciation can open the door to a lifelong love of music.
But how do you create an engaging and effective curriculum? Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you design one.
Step 1: Define The Goals of The Music Appreciation Curriculum
Start by determining what you want students to achieve with a music appreciation class curriculum. Clear goals help you focus your lessons. For young learners, the goals may include:
- Recognising different musical instruments
- Identifying basic elements of music (rhythm, melody, and harmony)
- Appreciating music from a variety of cultures and genres
- Developing active listening skills
Write these goals down to guide your planning.
Step 2: Understand Your Students
Consider the age, interests, and abilities of your students. Young children have short attention spans, so keep lessons brief and interactive.
Most importantly, consider the length of the music you wish to have them listen to. Early grades (K, 1 and 2) can only be expected to sit and listen for a few minutes. Therefore, expecting them to sit and listen to a whole symphony isn’t going to happen!
Use activities that match their developmental stage. For instance, younger students might enjoy moving to music. Older students might be ready to discuss how music makes them feel.
Step 3: Plan The Framework of the Music Appreciation Curriculum
A good curriculum has structure. Divide your lessons into manageable units. For example, you could organize your curriculum into monthly themes:
- Month 1: Introduction to Music Basics
- Month 2: Exploring Instruments
- Month 3: Learning About Genres
- Month 4: Music from Around the World
This framework provides a road map but allows room for flexibility.
Step 4: Create Engaging Lessons
Make lessons fun and interactive. Here are some ideas:
- Listening Activities: Play short clips of music. Ask students to identify instruments or describe how the music makes them feel.
- Instrument Exploration: Let students try simple instruments like tambourines or maracas. If possible, invite a musician to visit your class to demonstrate an instrument.
- Storytelling Through Music: Share stories about composers or musicians. Connect their lives to the music they created.
- Movement Activities: Encourage students to move to the beat. Dancing or simple gestures can help them feel the rhythm.
Step 5: Incorporate Cultural Diversity
Expose students to music from different cultures in your music appreciation syllabus. This fosters respect and curiosity about the world.
For example:
- Listen to African drumming and discuss its communal importance.
- Share traditional Chinese music and its use of unique instruments like the guzheng.
- Introduce classical pieces from Western composers, such as Beethoven or Mozart.
- Highlight similarities and differences to deepen their understanding.
Step 6: Watch as well as listen
Use a variety of media to listen to music. Sometimes, you can use
- Videos: Use YouTube or other platforms to watch performances.
- Listen without watching: You can have students close their eyes to focus just on the sounds they are hearing.
- Old fashioned records, tapes or CDs: Students will be amazed with old style media
- Go to concerts. There is nothing like a live experience for students to experience music
A variety of methods of listening will keep classes interesting and engaging for students.
Step 7: Encourage Participation and Discussion
Active participation enhances learning. Encourage students to:
- Share their thoughts on the music they are listening to
- Give reasons why they like or dislike a musical example
- Suggest their own favourite songs* or genres to listen to as a class
- Follow up their listening with playing or composing their own music in a similar style.
* We recommend ALWAYS having children suggest their music in a formal way, in writing. Never take suggestions ‘on the fly’ and play them. Emphasize that they cannot suggest anything with inappropriate themes or lyrics. Then listen carefully prior to presenting to the class. This will ensure students are not exposed to inappropriate content or lyrics. Plus, it will make sure that there is an educational reason for the listening.
Step 8: Build Connections to other Curriculum Areas
Help students connect music to other subjects. For example:
- Mathematics: Discuss patterns in rhythms.
- History: Explore how historical events influenced music.
- Art: Draw correlations between styles and periods in visual art and in music.
These cross-curricular activities enrich the learning experience.
Step 9: Assess Progress in your Music Appreciation Curriculum
Regularly evaluate how students are progressing. Use simple methods like:
- Quizzes on musical terms or instruments
- Observation during activities
- Short presentations or performances
Keep assessments light and positive. The goal is to encourage, not pressure.
Step 10: Adapt and Improve Your Music Appreciation Syllabus
Be flexible. Not every lesson will work perfectly. Pay attention to what engages your students and adjust accordingly. Gather feedback from students and parents to refine your approach.
Sample Music Appreciation Curriculum Lesson Plan
Here’s a quick example of what a single lesson might look like:
1.
Introduction and Pre-frame. Discuss the background of the music being shown. Who is the composer and/or performer? What instruments will they see? What is special about this particular musical example? The more enthusiasm you can give to this introduction, the more successful the music listening will be.
2.
Listen or Watch: Show a video or listen to the recording. Remind students that talking, moving is not appropriate, and distracts others. Create an atmosphere of quiet reflection ready to hear the music.
3.
Worksheet: Depending on their age, this could be as simple as blank piece of paper. Alternatively it can be quite an extensive questionnaire about the music they’ve just heard. Young students can draw a picture of something that the music reminds them of or colour a musical picture. Older students can answer factual questions and write about how the music made them feel.
4.
Discussion: Ask students to share their drawings and feelings about the music. Use open prompting questions such as “If this music was happening in a movie, what may be happening on the screen?.” This is preferable to closed questions such as “Who was the composer of this music?”
5.
Expansion/exploration: If you have time, find ways to expand the activity further. For example, have older children make a playlist of similar music on their devices. Younger children may like to create a poster for a similar musician’s concert, or draw themselves playing the featured musical instrument.
Does this all seem like a lot of work?
Yes, it is! That is why the Fun Music Company Music Curriculum exists. We have done all of the hard work for you in creating a music appreciation curriculum. We’ve found the examples and we’ve created the pre-frame videos and discussion points. We’ve made worksheets and discussion questions for every activity. And we’ve provided great ideas for expansion and exploration.
In the Fun Music Company Curriculum there is twenty CONNECT listening lessons in every single grade. That means that there are 140 lessons across all grades K-6.
Here is an example of the CONNECT music appreciation syllabus from just one grade:
This covers all genres of music, from classical composers through to jazz and rock styles. It also covers music from many different cultures and backgrounds.
Click through these slides to see the steps in one of the lessons:
- The pre-frame video
- Listening to the music
- The worksheet presentation
- The discussion
Conclusion: Why do all the work yourself?
So yes, you can create your own music appreciation curriculum for primary or elementary school.
This page has given you many insights on how to do that. However, if you don’t have time, the Fun Music Company Music Curriculum will give you a head start. As well as music listening, you’ll have the rest of your curriculum covered as well!
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