3rd Grade Music Overview

Music courses in elementary school allow students the opportunity to create and experience beauty through the performing arts. Students are taught musical concepts by exploring folksongs of diverse cultures, performing and composing rhythms and melodies, and listening critically to works by master composers. 

Music courses are generally broken into three overarching categories: 

• Music Theory
• Music History
• Choral Performance 

3rd GRADE FALL SEMESTER~

• Notation: The student will review the musical alphabet and notes on the treble clef including the G above the treble clef and the D below and middle C.  
• Rhythm: The student will learn to read, write, and perform the dotted half note. The student will learn to feel and write in three-meter time. The student will learn to recognize separate eighth notes and learn syncopation as eighth, quarter, eighth note patterns. The students will learn to see tied eighth notes and relate it to the equivalency of a quarter note.  
• Solfege: The student will learn to read, write and hear re as approached from and to so. The student will learn to read, write and hear low la. Students will sing and sight read the pentatonic scale.  
• Music History: Students will experience five different composers and learn to describe and analyze music using correct terminology.
• Performance: Students will learn four songs in preparation for a winter concert at the end of the semester. 

3rd GRADE SPRING SEMESTER~ 

• Notation: The student will continue to review the treble clef/G clef with note names of lines and spaces. The student will sight read the pentatonic scale and identify it in different positions on the staff. (Do is C, G, and F)
•  Rhythm: The student will learn to see and hear two sixteenth notes beamed together with an eighth note, as well as the inverse of eighth note beamed with two sixteenth notes.
• Solfege: The student will learn to read, hear, and sing high do as it relates to the pentatonic scale. Students will sing pentatonic scales from do to do and la to la in preparation for the major scale and natural minor scale.  
• Music History: Students will experience five different composers and learn to describe and analyze music using correct terminology.  
• Performance: Students will learn three to five songs in preparation for a spring concert at the end of the semester. 

*Taken from Great Hearts Faculty Resource Core Curriculum Documents