The incredible diversity of elementary music programs across our city directed our work firmly away from a one-size-fits-all curriculum and instead, led us toward the thoughtful and intentional development of materials that support multiple perspectives in planning. Our communities, personalities, teaching styles, students, and routines are all different as well as the physical resources, teaching materials, instrument inventory, and spaces in which we teach. For this reason, our team has created a flexible "road map" with 4 main curriculum documents that can be easily modified for any teaching situation. The documents were designed to serve as teaching tools with reflection questions and detailed explanations throughout in order to guide music teachers through developing a personalized curriculum for their own unique program while at the same time providing high-quality ready-to-use lesson plans.

A key element of this flexible approach was the intention to focus our music lessons on the humanistic elements of making music, which we call Anchor Values. Rooted in the Anchor Values, the lessons include engaging repertoire and activities that provide opportunities for our students to collaborate, communicate, express themselves and take risks while developing a deep understanding of music concepts and practicing their performance skills.

This work was born out of the NYCDOE Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in Music which provides benchmarks for Grade 2 and Grade 5 (as well as Grades 8 and12). We have sought to illustrate what Blueprint benchmarks look like on a more granular level by using our planning templates to create detailed unit and lesson plans for multiple grade levels (3K-5) and class types (core music, instrumental, and chorus.)

We have also sought to provide models of what an inclusive music curriculum can look like. These materials were created with all of our students in mind including our youngest learners in 3K, our students with disabilities, and our multilingual learners. And through these materials, we celebrate and embrace as a treasured asset the ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity of our school communities and our great city. Accordingly, unit themes reflect our commitment to grounding this work in Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education (CR-SE), Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), and Anti-Racist Pedagogy. Many resources can be explored on this website. More will continue to be added.

Our team felt that staying connected to "why" we make music is the most important foundational aspect of our teaching and should be centered in our teaching and planning. The "what" of our teaching - the musical concepts and performance skills - is always anchored in our “why,” or wrapped in these anchor values. Every lesson begins with the Anchor Values, which emphasize the powerful and humanizing ways we encounter music in our lives and in the world. Our 5 Anchor Values reflect the following tenets:

1. We make music to reflect and express our individual and collective traditions and experiences.

2. We make music to connect with and communicate to others.

3. We make music as an active response to personal experiences and social movements.

Our aim is for our students to move on from us curious, courageous, and aware, having made strong bonds with one another and their community, armed with experiences through music that have taught them that they matter and that their voices matter! They will know that music will be their soothing balm for the tough times, their window and their mirror for discovering empathy and understanding their own story and the stories of others, a tool for communicating what is hard to say, and their rally call when it is time to speak up for change. All of this will be deeply felt and experienced through active music making because the music content and skills will intentionally be centered in our 5 Anchor Values:

1. Music is Connection.

2. Music is Reflection.

3. Music is Expression.

4. Music is Communication.

5. Music is Action.

This approach to planning keeps the Scope and Sequence - the outline of musical concepts and skills - as the spine of your instruction. As expected, lesson activities continue to cultivate musical skill as has always been done. Meanwhile, we are also taking what we've learned about SEL, CR-SE, and our own personal and school-based experiences and instead of sprinkling them in here and there to our lessons, making them the anchor of the lesson by design. It's through this humanistic lens that we can help our students gain a deep understanding of the value and usefulness of making music throughout our lives.

The following 4 document types are explained below. We lead with the Scope and Sequence which is the big picture document and zoom our way in one layer at a time down to the lesson plan.

Scope and Sequence- The scope and sequence outlines which concepts and skills you introduce in each grade level. At a glance, you can see the big picture of your program and track what is introduced to students each year in a one-page chart. The expectation is that skills and concepts from previous years are revisited as students' proficiency level and depth of understanding develop further. We have organized the chart into 5 broad categories:

1. Rhythm & Meter

2. Pitch, Mode, Melody, & Harmony

3. Phrase, Form & Structure

4. Expressive Elements & Musical Contexts

5. Instruments & Ensembles

The first two categories of "Rhythm & Meter" and "Pitch, Mode, Melody, & Harmony" are also organized into two subcategories called "Aural" and "Notation" to account for the many preparatory activities that are used to introduce concepts through aural experiences and music-making before introducing the written notation, which is not always the central focus.

Curriculum Map- The curriculum map is the next smallest lens of the documents and goes one step deeper. The map takes the information from the Scope and Sequence and organizes it into a timeline of when to teach each concept and skill throughout the year. The map is divided into multiple-week units laid out chronologically and includes each unit's Anchor Values, Essential Questions, Repertoire lists (and links), Learning Targets, and Music Learning Activity summaries broken down by Musical Modality (Singing & Chanting, Moving, Playing Instruments, Composing & Improvising, Listening & Analysis, Questioning & Discussion).

Unit Plan Summary- The Unit Plan Summary details the highlights of an individual unit. It focuses on an overall unit description with brief individual lesson descriptions. Each unit our team has created includes an introductory video from the teacher-author that is filled with helpful things to note about that unique unit. The Unit Plan Summary also includes other important information such as the Anchor Values, Essential Questions, brief Repertoire and Activity descriptions, and both the NYC Blueprint Strands and the NYS Learning Standards for Music. One of the most important elements of the Unit Plan Summary is the side-by-side view of all the weekly Learning Targets. This chart allows you to see how the Learning Targets progress and build on one another throughout the unit and gives you an idea of what to find in each individual lesson. Units vary in length anywhere from 3 to 8 weeks.

Lesson Plans- The Lesson Plan document is an in-depth weekly breakdown of each lesson within a unit. It includes a multitude of supporting elements to guide your teaching including videos from the teacher-author, comments in the side margins, reflection questions, links to repertoire, and more. The main sections of the Lesson Plan document include:

1. Header- grade, class length, unit title, lesson #

2. Essential Question and Anchor Value Box

3. Student Facing - Learning Targets and Aim/Focus Questions

4. Teacher Facing- Learning Objectives, Key Concepts and Skills (Showing Understanding), Activating the Anchor Value, and Materials and Repertoire lists and links

5. Summary of Learning Activities Box- a "cheat sheet" of sorts to see at a glance the timing and purpose of each lesson activity

6. Teaching Sequence- Detailed lesson sequence broken down by activity, timing, and musical modality

7. Assessment Strategies/Practices- Observational focus of each lesson

8. Space for User Reflection

Each teacher-author has used these document templates to create the units found on this site. While we each have our own teaching approach and style, creating and using the templates assured that we were thinking through every important element of our planning as we prepared these Teacher Models. The curriculum document templates can be found on the template page on this site.

NOW AVAILABLE:

• 3K/Pre-K Early Childhood Core Music Gina Costanza explores Salsa Music and Latinx Heritage while welcoming our young learners into the routines of the music classroom in Unit 1 of PreK/3K core music.

• Year 1 Piano with Music and the Brain Stacy Chan incorporates the Music and the Brain piano curriculum into Unit 2 of year 1 (often Kindergarten) classroom piano instruction.

• 1st Grade Core Music Katie Traxler uses the book All Are Welcome as inspiration for some rhythmic name-play and a movement game called Rig a Jig Jig to get moving in Unit 1 of first grade core music.

• K-2 SWD Core Music Emily Davis adapts Katie Traxler's 1st Grade Unit 1 for students with disabilities.

• 2nd Grade Core Music Jeannie Kim uses the popular book Your Name is a Song to have students make connections between rhythm and their names in Unit 1 of second grade core music.

• 5th Grade Core Music With the book Looking Like Me, Katie Traxler explores identity and community through movement, body percussion, and rhythmic composition in Unit 1 of 5th grade core music.

COMING SOON:

• Kindergarten Core Music

• 3rd Grade Core Music

• Upper Elementary Chorus

• 4th/5th Grade Beginner Band

• Considerations for Multilingual Learners

Like our perspectives in the classroom, our curriculum is always changing and evolving. We expect these lessons and all supporting documents to be in a continuous state of revision. We plan to share all updated versions here. We also intend to expand our offering of perspectives into more areas of elementary music.

If you have questions about any of the lessons, feel free to contact our teacher-authors by email. Team emails may be found on the Our Team page.

Review the presentation given by the team at this past spring's City-Wide Professional Development workshop for further explanation of this process.

Look closer at our Anchor Value Flower Chart by clicking the image to view a bigger graphic. Feel free to print and hang in your classroom!