Grade 4 Curriculum
Unit 1: Ensemble Exploration
Essential Questions
Essential Questions
Essential Questions
- What makes a musical ensemble?
- How can we make our own musical ensembles?
- There are four instrument families that are separated by the way they are played: Brass, Woodwind, Percussion, and String
- The voice is an instrument.
- Ensembles can be made up of many different kind of instrument families, or all the same instrument family.
- It is essential to listen to others and work together when making music in an ensemble.
- Explore different musical ensembles, instrumental, vocal, and mixed
- Create own musical ensemble
- Identify instruments in orchestra
- Create own musical ensembles: first instrumental, then vocal
- Compose and perform musical ostinatos in the ensembles
- Learn and use alternative vocal techniques: scatting
- Connect solfeg-- barred instruments-- staff
- Sight sing simple pentatonic patterns (do re mi)
Essential Questions
- How do the musical elements interact to make music?
- Why do composers change musical elements?
- There are eight basic musical elements: pitch, rhythm, harmony, dynamics, tempo, instrumentation, form, and mood.
- Composers use and change these eight elements to communicate certain feelings or meanings.
- Be able to identify and change the 8 musical elements listening and creating.
- Learn the 8 musical elements: rhythm, pitch, harmony, mood, tempo, dynamics, timbre, form
- Learn and demonstrate how to change these elements: listening and musical element project
- Sight sing simple pentatonic: do re mi so la
- Sight sing pentatonic patterns on treble staff with changing keys (if they know what “do” is)
- Compose simple ostinatos using standard rhythmic notation and combine them to create a group composition
- Know the 8 musical elements, hear them change in music, and find them in their own music