Update January 29: The upper grade students have become more proficient in reading our basic rhythms and we have begun to combine different types of basic rhythms together to read more complicated rhythmic ideas. The ideas that we are starting to be exposed to are found in many pop songs and the students like the idea of learning the rhythmic and melodic concepts in songs they enjoy to listen to on the radio.
We are also beginning to do a lot of work reading melodic ideas off of the staff which is proving to be a challenge but the students are doing well with it.
Update September 5th: Hola! I am incredibly excited to welcome back the upper grade students. This year will be full of musical challenges for them as we move past the basic ideas of music.
Last year we left off with the melodic concept of the pentatonic scale. This is a very important scale that is used in a vast amount of music from classical, jazz, pop, and more. We also covered a large amount of rhythmic concepts including Quarter Note, Quarter Rest, Eighth Note, Half Note, Sixteenth note, and various combinations of Eighth and Sixteenth note.
Moving forward we will continue on expanding our Pentatonic scale and we will talk about Minor Pentatonic and Major Pentatonic.
Our incoming Third Graders will have slightly higher class expectations now that they are an upper grade student. One of these expectations is a music notebook which will be handed out in class. Using this notebook will be a large part of class and will be key for your child to be successful in Music Class.