Music Class

in Elementary School

Overview

Elementary general music helps our students become tuneful, beatful, artful musicians, with skills to last a lifetime. Music class is one of 5 elementary specials and occurs 3 consecutive school days every 15-day cycle. Students in music class develop listening, singing, playing and moving skills that build upon each other every year. In music class students can expect to sing, respond to music, move expressively, play classroom instruments such as unpitched percussion, boomwhackers and orff instruments, listen to, create and improvise music.

A group of diverse young elementary students smiling and playing colorful classroom instruments, including boomwhackers and hand drums, during a music lesson.

Feierabend
First Steps in Music

Grades K-2

Vocal Music classes in QCSD for grades K-2 are based on John Feierabend’s First Steps in Music musical ‘workout’ which includes 8 components outlined below. These elements are practiced with a wide variety of repertoire whose ultimate goal is for our students to be tuneful (to have melodies in their heads and to learn to coordinate their voices to sing those tunes) beat-ful (to feel the pulse of music and how that pulse is grouped) and artful (to have an emotional and expressive connection to music)

The First Steps Workout includes:

Pitch Exploration Activities

These sliding sounds are used at the start of class to help students engage the muscles used to sing, particularly with head voice. It can be thought of as very similar to an athlete warming up muscles before athletic performance.

A teacher leading a group of young students in a classroom vocal warmup exercise as they raise their hands and make expressive faces.

Song Fragments

We progress from echo songs to call and response songs as we scaffold up in difficulty. During these songs students often have a chance to lead the group in short solos.

A young boy standing in front of his classmates holding rhythm sticks while leading a call-and-response song activity.

Simple Songs

Simple Songs use a limited number of pitches, are short and easy to remember, and should enable students to sing solos with success and confidence. Pitch range increases as students are able to sing longer and more complicated melodies.

A young girl standing in front of her class holding a microphone while singing a solo.

Arioso

Arioso are spontaneous student sung solos. These opportunities allow the children a chance to demonstrate their own creativity, musicality and thoughts through singing.

A small group of young students sitting on a colorful rug, smiling and singing spontaneously together in class.

Song Tales

Song Tales are stories sung for children. These sung stories provide excellent examples of singing, quality musical literature, and expressiveness. They also provide an opportunity for our students to work on their active listening skills and to make connections from their own experiences to the musical story.

A teacher holding an open picture book and singing to a group of young elementary students sitting on the floor listening attentively.

Movement Exploration

These movement warm-up activities are based on the Laban movement themes (such as space, weight, together/apart, levels, shape, flow, etc.) and help children develop body coordination and awareness as well as expressive sensitivity when paired with music. This work provides students with a ‘movement vocabulary’ they can then use in movement/dance activities.

A teacher leading young students in expressive movement and dancing around a classroom with colorful instruments placed around them.

Movement for Form & Expression

These activities help our students experience the expressive qualities of music through movement as well as to experience form through organized movement (form is the way the parts of sections of a piece of music are organized.) These activities may include fingerplays at younger ages and action songs and dance like activities in the later grades.

A group of elementary students sitting in a circle and clapping their hands together during a rhythmic movement game.

Beat Motion Activities Steady

Steady beat is essential to all later rhythmic development. Performing specific motions and movements while maintaining steady beat at specific tempos is our first goal, and once that is secure, our students move on to hearing, feeling, and performing beats in groups of two or three. These activities include songs, rhymes, and moving with recorded music.

Once our second graders complete the goal of First Steps and become tuneful, artful and beatful, they begin to work on connecting the sounds and melodies they know with musical notation in a musical literacy curriculum known as ‘Conversational Solfege.’

A young elementary student playing a colorful wooden xylophone with mallets during a music lesson.

A music teacher interacting with elementary students on a classroom rug below an illustrated diagram showing the progression from listening and speaking to musical notation.

Feierabend
Conversational Solfege

Grades 3-5

Once students have built a strong foundation in singing, moving, and listening through First Steps in Music, they transition to Conversational Solfege, a music literacy curriculum developed by Dr. John Feierabend.

Just like children learn to speak before they learn to read and write, Conversational Solfege teaches students to hear and understand music before reading it on a page.

The Language Parallel: How We Learn

Think about how a child acquires their native language:

Listen: They hear words spoken all around them.
Speak: They begin to imitate sounds, words, and full sentences.
Think: They think in words and create original thoughts.
Read: They connect written symbols (letters and words) to the sounds they already know.
Write: They write down their own original thoughts using those symbols.

Conversational Solfege follows this exact natural sequence, moving through 12 steps to guide students seamlessly from "hearing" to "creating."

How It Works in Class

We apply this natural learning cycle across two main pathways: Rhythm (beat and time) and Pitch/Tone (melody and solfege notes like Do-Re-Mi).

A music notation diagram showing a quarter note labeled "du", paired eighth notes labeled "du-de", and a quarter rest with an arrow above a musical staff.

Rhythm (The "Pattern" of Music)

Hear & Speak: Long before reading notes, students chant rhythmic patterns (using syllable sounds like du and du-de) to internalize beat and duration through feeling and sound.
Think & Decode: Students hear a rhythm tapped out or clapped and "translate" it in their minds to rhythm syllables without seeing notation.
Read & Write: Only after a rhythm is comfortable in their ears and minds do students see quarter notes, eighth notes, or rests. They then practice reading rhythms from sight and writing out rhythms they hear.

A music notation diagram showing notes on a treble staff paired with hand signs labeled "Do", "Re", and "Mi".

Pitch & Tone (The "Melody" of Music)

Hear & Speak: Students learn short melodic phrases by ear using pitch syllables (Do, Re, Mi, So, La).
Think & Decode: When listening to a familiar or new tune, students can identify the hidden pitch patterns in their heads ("Ah, that goes So - Mi - La - So - Mi!").
Read & Write: Students connect those pitch relationships directly to the musical staff. Because they already know how the notes sound, staff notation simply becomes a visual map for music they can already "hear" in their minds.

The Goal: Musical Literacy for Life

By teaching music through the natural language development model, students don't just memorize symbols on a sheet. They develop audiation (the ability to hear and comprehend music in the mind when no sound is present). This empowers them to sight-sing, improvise, compose, and enjoy music with true understanding.

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