On Wednesday, November 12th, 2025 at 5:30 PM in the MES Gym, our 3rd-grade students will present the Celebrating America concert. This special performance honors our veterans and America’s artistic heritage, celebrating the service and sacrifices of veterans and their families while showcasing the students’ hard work. It provides a meaningful opportunity to connect music with history, culture, and community, develop performance skills, and understand music’s role in expressing gratitude, pride, and identity.

What makes music learning and teaching different than other subjects is that music learning can be viewed as an upward spiral. In this musical upward spiral, students start with a fundamental concept, like learning two basic notes to sing or play, then move on to new concepts such as rhythm. This upward spiral then cycles back to familiar concepts, but each time with new challenges and higher levels of skill.

By 3rd grade, students have cycled through many of these concepts multiple times, reaching a higher point on their upward spiral of learning. At this stage, music classes move beyond simple recall and understanding of music facts, and focus on higher-level thinking skills such as:

• Applying prior knowledge to new music (MU.Pr4.3.C)

• Analyzing patterns, form, and relationships between musical parts (MU.Re7.3.B)

• Evaluating music and performances using criteria (MU.Re9.3.A)

• Creating and refining original musical ideas individually and in groups (MU.Cr1.3.A-B, MU.Cr3.3.A-B)
  
  

These experiences help students grow as musicians who can perform expressively think critically and a shared personal responsibility in learning their part in the music.