The National Core Arts Standards

The National Core Arts Standards

In 2014, the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) revamped its Arts Standards to make them more comprehensive, so as to provide students with a more well-rounded music education. In doing so, they outlined the following essential questions for ensemble music education. Each of the questions is categorized under the four overarching standards: Create, Perform, Respond, and Connect. Throughout the year, we will reference these questions within the context of the vocal music that we practice/perform in our curricular and extracurricular ensembles.

Create

• How do musicians generate creative ideas?

• How do musicians make creative decisions?

• How do musicians improve the quality of their creative work?

• When is creative work ready to share?

Perform

• How do performers select repertoire?

• How does understanding structure and context of musical works inform performance?

• How do performers interpret musical works?

• How do musicians improve the quality of their performance?

• When is a performance judged ready to present?

• How do context and the manner in which musical work is presented influence audience response?

Respond

• How do individuals choose music to experience?

• How does understanding the structure and context of music influence a response?

• How do we discern the musical creators’ and performers’ expressive intent?

• How do we judge the quality of musical work(s) and performance(s)?

Connect

• How do musicians make meaningful connections between creating, performing and responding?

• How do the other arts, other disciplines, contexts and daily life inform creating, performing and responding to music?