Middle School Music Classes

Sixth Grade Music has three areas of skill development: reading music, listening to music, and performing on handbells. Texts include Practical Theory by Sandy Feldstein and a notebook of listening assignments coordinated with a CD that provides carefully selected musical examples from the Western classical, jazz, and world music traditions. Students perform on handbells at Middle School assemblies and the winter and spring concerts.

Seventh Grade Music has a continuous focus on a listening. Students are walked through structured listening exercises relating to form, range, meter, patterns, harmony, color, social implications and emotional effect. These exercises use American, Western Classical, and music from around the world. By the end of the course, students are also taught to read notes in three clefs and count out rhythms containing sixteenth notes in 4/4 and 6/8 time signatures. If there is time at the end of the quarter, the class may complete a basic snare drumming unit.

In Eighth Grade Music the year is divided between a fully staged production for the first trimester with every member of the class singing, dancing and acting, and electives for the remainder of the year. The electives are conducted in small groups and offer a wide range of music activities. In the past these have included courses on Songwriting, Handbells, Afro-Cuban hand drumming, Jazz Band, etc.