WILSON MUSIC DEPARTMENT GOALS

•  Students will experience the enrichment of life mentally, physically, socially, and emotionally through enjoying and appreciating worthwhile musical activities. 

•  Students have the opportunity to participate in musical activities and performances. 

•  Students will experience the music of American culture and the use of music in  American life today. 

•  Students will experience opportunities that lead to a nonprofessional lifetime association with music and to a career in music through specialization. 

•  Students can strengthen other areas of learning through correlated musical activities.  

•  Students can create and express music through their unique imagination, emotions, and energy. 

•  Students will value the personal satisfaction achieved through increased ability to interpret musical communication. 

•  Students will experience music associated with other countries of the world. 

•  Students will know the function of sound and silence in music and how it has been and may be used to communicate ideas, feelings, and moods.

MUSIC IS SCIENCE 

It is exact and specific, and it demands exact acoustics. A conductor's full score is a chart, a graph that indicates frequencies, intensities, volume changes, melody, and harmony all at once and with the most exact control of time.

MUSIC IS MATHEMATICAL

It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into fractions, which must be done instantaneously, not worked out on paper.

Its architectural form is simple and complex, structurally intricate and detailed.

MUSIC IS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Most of the terms are in Italian, German, or French and the notation is certainly not English, but a highly developed shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas. The semantics of music is the most complete and universal language.

MUSIC IS HISTORY

Music reflects the environment and times of its creation, often even the country and/or racial feelings.

MUSIC IS PHYSICAL EDUCATION

It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lips, and cheeks, and facial muscles, in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragm, back, stomach, and chest muscles, which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets.

Music is all these things, but most of all...

MUSIC IS ART

It allows a human being to take all these dry, technically difficult techniques and use them to create emotion, feeling, and humanity.

SKILLS GRADE 3-5

PERFORMING

Singing and Playing Instruments

1. I can produce accurate pitch with expanded ranges

2. I can sing and play music independently

3. I can create harmony with my voice or instrument

4. I can sing and play with expression

5. I can use the correct techniques when singing or playing

INTERPRETING

Reading and Notating Music

1. I can interpret rhythm patterns, including whole, half, dotted half, quarter, 

dotted quarter, eighth, sixteenth notes, and rests in 2/4,¾, 4/4, and 6/8

2. I can interpret through voice or instruments simple pitch 

3. I can recognize pitches 

4. I can apply understanding of standard musical symbols

5. I can use standard symbols to notate rhythm, meter, pitch, and dynamics

CREATING

Improvisation, Arranging, Composing music

1. I can use improvisation to create short songs using traditional and nontraditional songs

2. I can create compositions and arrangements within specified guidelines.

3. I can create rhythmic compositions using notation which are arranged using a variety of sound sources.

RESPONDING

Listening to, moving to, analyzing, and evaluating music

1. I can interpret through instruments and or voice the gestures of the conductor

2. I can use music terminology in explaining music

3. I can design a set of criteria for evaluating music performance and compositions

4. I can exemplify appropriate behaviors 

5. I can identify the sounds of a variety of instruments

6. I can classify classroom, orchestra, and world instruments 

CONNECTING

Understanding music concerning history and culture, other disciplines, 21st-century skills, and life

1. I can exemplify how various groups use music for artistic expression within the community

2. I can understand how music affects and is reflected in culture

3. I can understand the relationships between music and concepts from the other areas.