Performing Arts
February 9, 2021
A Vision for the Music Programme
at ÉRHSS: 2019 – 2022
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Program Goals
According to the Manitoba Arts Curriculum, the overarching goal of the music curriculum is to support, nurture, and inspire the growth of every student as a music maker. The curriculum states:
Every student is a music maker, one whose growth and learning are best realized within rich, meaningful, hands-on music-making experiences. In becoming young musicians, students learn to sing and play the music of a variety of places, times, and peoples, as well as to improvise, arrange, and compose music. As increasingly reflective and artistic music-makers, students gain skills, understandings, and attitudes that enrich them in many ways, enabling and inspiring them to continue making music for the rest of their lives.
Every student is a creator and composer. Students must be given opportunities to tap into their creative capacities and express themselves through the creation and sharing of their own music. As they become capable of generating and developing ideas in the process of music creation, students learn to think with flexibility and imagination.
Music: Manitoba Curriculum Framework of Outcomes: Kindergarten to Grade 8
In the music programme at École Robert H. Smith School, we will develop confident, collaborative, respectful, and motivated musicians through engaging programming. Being a music maker embraces approximation, collaboratively creating and producing music to the best of their current musical ability. For example, a student might play the entire composition, even if they can currently only play one note of the full chord. Students might compose re-interpretations, adaptations, or mash-ups. We value the idea that by engaging and empowering students in the early years we can create independent learners / musicians in the later years.
As increasingly capable and passionate music-makers, students begin a journey toward becoming creative, musically-literate adults, the kinds of citizens who will truly enrich their own lives and the lives of their future communities.
Program Focus
The Music Programme at RHS will emphasize student collaboration in large (10+), medium (5-6) and small groups (3-4). Students will not only learn music skills, but also collaboration skills. RHS students will express themselves creatively through lyrics, melodies, chord progressions, drumbeats, accompaniment parts. The program features an apprenticeship model which expects participation from the beginning, gradually increasing the degree of independence to the point students are creating, producing, and performing their own music. The program encourages a growth mindset - the idea that musical ability is the result of hard work and effort and is not a talent or trait possessed by the fortunate few.
Grades 1-3 Focus: Participate in Rhythm, Song, and Movement
- Students engage in steady beat through song, dance, instruments (barred instrument, percussion, ukuleles), games.
- Students co-create lyrics (as a class and small groups)
- Students express songs through movement, instruments, and written forms
- Students learn chord progressions using - I IV V vi as well as student-created chord progressions
- Student can employ beats with two different sounds
Grades 4-6 Focus: Modern Band Approach
- Students develop skills using instruments that include guitar, ukulele, bass, barred instruments, bucket drums, piano, singing, and woodwinds.
- Students play songs from various genres of music using these instruments as a full class and in small groups
- Students create lyrics, chord progressions, drum beats, melodies and forms, eventually leading to fully original songs (in -class, small-group, and individually)
- Students record these original songs
- Students use steady beat: on its own, to accompany songs (on all instruments), against complimentary rhythm, against complementary rhythms of increased complexity
Key Performances
As we develop our programming in ways that make learning meaningful and foster independent music makers, we are exploring possibilities that may look different than what many of us have experienced in the past.
In the first part of each year, performances and recordings of classes will mainly feature students in grades 5 and 6. These students have developed many of the necessary skills (both musical and collaborative) that are required for creating authentic musical experiences.
The younger grades will spend the first months developing musical skills and abilities to work as a whole class and in small groups. As much as possible, program will feature performances that are student-generated. Students first build skills, then use them as a way to create and express their original ideas, pull these ideas together, and share their music with others / the community.
2019-2020 Performances
- (Halloween) 210 Performance
- (Remembrance Day, November 8) 201 Performance
- (November) Grade 6s CBC Music Class Challenge - filmed and recorded
- (December 12 - 9:45 AM) N/K + Musical Theater Club winter concert
- (January 22) Grade 5 (6 PM) - 6 (7:15 PM) Winter Modern Band (full classes)
- (April 23) Guitar club and musical Theater performances Cancelled
- (May 12) Grades 4 - 6 Performances for RHS 100th Anniversary
- (May 21) Grade 1-3 Spring concert
- (June 16) Grade 5-6 Modern Band concert (medium sized groups(5-6 students)
- (June 17 - Rain Date June 18) "Busking Festival" for grades 4-6- small groups around the block - beginning stages of Street Festival
2020-2021 Performances
- (November) Grade 4/5 Remembrance Day Service Virtual Performances
- (November) Grade 6s CBC Music Class Challenge - filmed and recorded
- (May) Culminating event for 1-3
- (June) Grade 4-6 Music Festival (medium sized groups (5-6 students)
2021-2022 Performances
- (Halloween) Grade 1-4 Performance, grade 5 performances
- (Remembrance Day) Grade 5 Performance
- (November) Grade 6s CBC Music Class Challenge - filmed and recorded
- (December) Nursery / Kindergarten winter concert
- (December) Grade 4-6 Winter Modern Band (full classes) covers
- (March) Grades 4-6 recording competition
- (May) Grade 1-3 or 1-6 Culminating Event
- (June) Grade 4-6 Street festival (medium sized groups (5-6 students) of covers and original music in the afternoon (1 hour) for grades 1-3 to see, evening slot (1 hour) for parents to come and see.
Aligning the RHS Music Program with the Manitoba Arts Curriculum
Our Manitoba Arts curriculum aims to develop young music makers who will continue to make music throughout their lives. The curriculum articulates four major areas of artistic development, represented visually by the wings of a butterfly.
In music (the other arts are dance, drama, and visual arts), the first area of emphasis is making music in a meaningful context. Students develop and understanding that music is rooted in a time, place, and community as they listen to and create. Over time, students develop an understanding of how music reflects and influences culture and identity.
The second goal area for music programs is on music-making skills. These skills include the elements, concepts, and techniques for making music. These goals also include the appropriate interpersonal skills for making music collectively.
A third area for achievement in music in the new arts curriculum is developing the capacity for creative expression. Here, students are expected to imagine, perform, and compose. Both collaboratively and individually, students learn to generate, develop, and communicate ideas by creating original and interpretive music for a variety of purposes and audiences. They share their individual or collaborative compositions with others in performances and recordings.
Finally, the fourth goal for students is that they value musical experiences. As students experience music, they develop ways to analyze, reflect on, and find meaning in their own and others' music.
To read the full curriculum, access https://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/arts/framework/k8music