Grade 4 • Music What Your Child Will Learn
At all levels, music education in Howard County focuses on these three artistic processes:
- Performing: Realizing artistic ideas and work through individual or ensemble performance or presentation
- Creating: Conceiving and developing artistic ideas through music-making while connecting to historical, contextual, and personal events
- Responding: Synthesis of meaning, context, and process through interaction with, and connection to the musical world
Musical concepts are carefully sequenced through kinesthetic, aural, and visual experiences. The student's singing voice is the primary instrument and developed throughout the elementary general music curriculum. In fourth grade, students may elect to join the band and/or chorus program at their school.
Melody
- Perform simple pitch notation on the treble staff in the Key of C major using solfeggio or a comparable system.
- Sing and play a variety of music with accurate intonation and timbre.
- Perform singing games from different cultures.
- Notate simple improvised melodies on the treble staff using standard notation.
Harmony and Texture
- Sing partner songs with descants.
- Perform melodically correct ostinati or chordal accompaniment patterns while other students sing or play contrasting parts.
- Read standard chordal symbols and play on classroom instruments (I and V chords).
Tone Color
- Identify various world instruments.
- Listen to and identify soprano, alto, tenor, and bass voices.
Tempo
- Listen to, perform, and describe music that includes presto, moderato, and largo.
- Sing and play a variety of music at a given tempi.
Rhythm
- Describe sounds heard with attention to rhythm.
- Perform accurately simple rhythm at sight from standard notation: tied notes (whole, half, and quarter combination).
- Perform rhythmically correct ostinati while other students sing or play contrasting patterns.
- Write simple rhythm patterns from dictation using whole, half quarter, two connected eighth notes and corresponding rest in 2/4 and 3/4 time.
Movement
- Perform singing games and traditional dances from a variety of world cultures.
- Conduct music in meter in four.
Dynamics
- Sing and/or play in groups matching dynamics levels responding to the conducting cues from the teacher.
Form
- Identify sonata, suite, and overture when presented aurally and visually.