Q. What is a "unified curriculum"?
A. The staff at Community Music teaches the same musical content and skills to the entire student body.
We have researched and agreed on the method, repertoire and skill sets that are considered to be best practice in the field of music education for developing musicianship.
This guarantees that you receive a quality music education from each of our faculty.
Q. Please provide me with an example of a music learning sequence. How would you implement this sequence to students of different musical age levels?
A Learning Sequence
Basic Overview
The successful learning of any discipline depends on the manner in which the developmentally appropriate instruction is sequenced over time.
The implementation of scientifically based strategies is critical during the learning process. Progress and levels of achievement depend on the efforts of both teacher and student.
Stage I
A beginner student will be encouraged to learn the basic harmony, melody and meter of specific songs. We would also encourage a beginner student to demonstrate a simple rhythm pattern through singing and playing on his or her instrument. Introduction to notation and de-coding signs and symbols are introduced based on a student's prior knowledge. Gaining familiarity and awareness of musical patterns that exist is vital at this stage of musical development.
Stage II
An intermediate student will be expected to demonstrate the execution of a group of melodies and rhythms on their instrument. Intermediate students are also expected to perform and discriminate between different rhythmic and tonal patterns. In addition, intermediate students will be expected to gain more familiarity with improvisational activities and begin to experience more de-coding of traditional forms of notation.
Stage III
A more advanced student will be required to master specific melodies, harmonies and rhythms. Students at this level of development will be required to demonstrate melodic and harmonic awareness as well as beat competency in different meters with and without their instruments. Various harmonic voicings and more advanced harmonic progressions will be explored. Reading standard and alternate notation will be incorporated into weekly activities to help encourage music literacy and to build strategies to become better music readers. In addition, developing musicianship through improvisation activities will be encouraged and modeled.