Kindergarten Music Outline

I've been doing some work on kindergarten music for a long time.  When I started teaching 5 years ago, the way my traveling job was set up involved teaching 11 kindergarten classes.  One school in the district was all kindergarten, 10 classes, so I was there half the day three days per week.  My new job has had 5 kindergarten classes every year.  So, I'd say I'm pretty used to teaching kindergarten, and I think I've gotten pretty good at it.  Not amazing or anything, but pretty good.

I've had two kindergarten curriculums.  I've liked both, but I have felt that they weren't as all-inclusive as I'd prefer.  They are much more unit-based, which is okay, but I want to make sure my kindergarteners are getting a well-rounded and full standards-aligned curriculum, so I've added lots to both.  The first curriculum I had was Share the Music, which I felt was really great at the kindergarten level.  At my current school, I have Music Expressions (made by WB...how strange!) which is very, very good.  I've sort of mixed the two together.  I purchased my own kindergarten level Share the Music book and CD set when I taught at my previous school, so I still have access to the music I used.

I think my April goal here will be to write up an entire kindergarten curriculum by posting something each day related to kindergarten music teaching.  Of course, I am always looking to improve and get better, etc, and I know that I'll need to start aligning things to the Common Core standards, but those will be secondary to the music standards, which are my job-required standards to align.  I live in Illinois, so I will be using the 1994 National Standards for Music Education established by then-MENC now-NAfME, and I will be using the State Goals and Standards #25, 26, and 27 for the Fine Arts, with a focus on the music ones, for Illinois.

Today, as a start, I'll just post my primary unit topics.  I will add here that I like to try to include all nine standards at least once in every unit that I write because I think it is more important to include all of the standards and to write my lessons around those than it is to write my lessons first and then try to pick and choose standards that work.  So here they are, in the order that I like to teach them.

First Semester
1. Get to know me, get to know you, get to know music class (singing, movement, and beat)
2. Beat/Rhythm
3. Singing
4. Opposites (Fast/Slow, High/Low, Loud/Soft, Up/Down)
5. Singing/Rhythm games
6. Same/Different

Second Semester
1.  Percussion
2.  Beat/Rhythm with Percussion
3.  Instrument Families/Aural Recognition
4.  Carnival of the Animals
5.  Open House Musical
6.  Reading Rhythms (Quarter Notes, Quarter Rests, Two-Eighths)

Throughout the year, I have "days off" from the units we are doing to celebrate seasons and holidays. We also do listening assignments in every unit.  With listening assignments, we do movement activities, history learning (about the composers, their lives, and stories about their music), and form. One of my improvement goals is to write in evaluating lessons.

I feel like I should also note that I try my best to incorporate everything we learn from the first semester into our studies in the second semester whenever they apply.  For example, in the first semester, we learn about opposites.  I try to bring our opposites back in to all of the other music we learn for the rest of the year.

I hope I can continue to post parts of my units until I've got the entire curriculum up here.  Wherever there are technology materials available, I'll try to post links.  I use a Promethean Board in my classroom, so I am able to upload any flipcharts I make to the Promethean website to be available for download for others.  Any PowerPoint presentations, I will also upload.  I hope to eventually have everything that is legally mine here and available for use for others.

I felt so overwhelmed my first year of teaching.  I had minor training in elementary music.  I was focused on teaching high school, but that isn't where the cards landed.  I think it is important to try to plant roots where you are if there aren't options to go where you need to go.  Therefore, I want to do the best I can teaching what I've been blessed to teach and improve as much as I can.  I hope these posts will be useful to someone else who might be in my shoes!