4th 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 

4th GRADE FALL SEMESTER~

• Notation: Students will review writing and creating the treble clef, bass clef, and grand staff. Students will review the note names of all lines and spaces on each staff.
• Rhythm: Students will review note and rest values of whole, half, quarter, and eighth. Students will define the upper and lower number of a time signature. Students will identify time signatures and read in simple and compound time. Students will identify unbeamed eighth notes and read to perform syncopation.
• Solfege: Students will review the pentatonic scale (do, re, mi, so, la) adding low la, and high do. Students will learn fa relationship as half step from mi and whole step from so. Students will sight-read pentatonic scale and added relationships of low la, low so, and high do.
• Music History: Students will experience five different composers and learn to describe and analyze music using correct terminology. Students will learn the symphonic form and be able to identify it from a given listening example.
• Performance: Students will learn four songs in preparation for a winter concert at the end of the semester. 

4th GRADE SPRING SEMESTER~ 

• Notation: Students will label the keyboard and identify diatonic movement on the staff and keyboard. Students will label whole and half steps and appropriately use and label sharps and flats. Students will identify slurs and ties and understand their use in a composition.
• Rhythm: Students will learn sixteenth notes and group them as four or as two with an eighth note. Students will identify and correctly label/count compound meter.
• Solfege: Students will identify ti as the leading tone in a scale. Students will be able to sing the major scale with all hand-signs.
• Music History: Students will experience five different composers and learn to describe and analyze music using correct terminology. Students will learn to identify rondo form and concerto form, as well as discover theme and variations.
• 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