January Music (Grades 6-8) Update!
Hello Families!
In 6th through 8th grade, students have been introduced to the 6 main elements of music: melody, harmony/texture, expression, rhythm, form and timbre. As a class, we discussed the meanings of the overall categories. We discovered that some musical terms are commonly misunderstood or confused (rhythm vs. beat, dynamics (loud/soft) vs. pitch (high/low).
The students have also recently taken a basic music pretest. (It is NOT being graded; it is for my information/planning.) The results are allowing me to better see which students have a more technical music background. Moving forward, this information will be used to better assign projects and create groups.
The current project in 6th through 8th grade, focuses mainly on song form. The students are researching an artist/band, composer or musical, looking at the time period in which it was written, and choosing one song to look at in depth to analyze. They are using laptops to begin looking up facts about the artist for the biography section, and lyrics/chords for the analysis section. I handed out a sample project last week, so the students have a guide to follow.
*I will be posting the sample project that I gave out in School Loop.*
Stay tuned for more information!