Colorado Academic Standards Online

Colorado Essential Skills:

1. Build on personal experience to specify a challenging problem to investigate. (Creativity and Innovation)
2. Recognize and describe cause-and-effect relationships and patterns in everyday experiences. (Critical Thinking and Analysis)
3. Demonstrate a willingness to try new things. (Creativity and Innovation)

Inquiry Questions:

1. Why is it important to keep a steady beat in certain situations?
2. Why are patterns important in music?

Expand and Connect:

1. Use of culturally diverse nursery rhymes and songs to enable varying ways to teach content skills and concepts.
2. Musicality is the ability to perform and respond to music in meaningful ways.
3. When performers respond to patterns and symbols of music, they are communicating a composer’s message just as a reader is communicating an author’s message.

Colorado Essential Skills:

1. Communicating a variety of ideas and emotions through performance demonstrates a willingness to try new things. (Adaptability and Flexibility)
2. Consider purpose, formality of context/audience, and distinct cultural norms when planning content, mode, delivery, and expression of a performance. (Social Awareness)
3. Articulate musical ideas using different forms of communication to express themselves. (Interpersonal Communication)

Inquiry Questions:

1. How can music tell a story?
2. Why are there changes in tempo and dynamic level in music?
3. Why is it important to keep a steady beat in certain situations?

Expand and Connect:

1. Singing songs focusing on phonemic awareness and songs that use cross body movements aid in the physiological needs of beginning reading skills.
2. Musicality is the ability to perform and respond to music in a variety of ways.
3. Responding to patterns and symbols in music communicates a composer’s message just as a reader is communicating an author’s message.

Colorado Essential Skills:

1. Evaluating progress through practicing and adapting musical skills to attain performance goals aids in developing musicianship. (Perseverance and Resilience)
2. Recognizing where performance problems can be identified, as well as possible solutions can be created within musical practice and refinement processes, increases critical thinking within a musical context. (Critical Thinking and Analysis)
3. Implementing a variety of task and time management strategies through musical practice and refinement processes supports development of high-quality musical products. (Self-Management)
4. Synthesizing information from multiple sources helps to demonstrate understanding of a topic. (Problem Solver: Critical Thinking and Analysis)

Inquiry Questions:

1. When is a musical work ready to share?
2. Why is it important to interpret music symbols accurately and consistently in certain musical situations?
3. Why is it important to follow the person leading the group (e.g., director, conductor, teacher)?

Expand and Connect:

1. Musicality is the ability to perform and respond to music in a variety of ways.
2. Understanding responsible personal and social behaviors in musical settings gives insights to societal expectations in similar group settings.
3. When performers respond to patterns and symbols of music, they are communicating a composer’s message just as a reader is communicating an author’s message.

Colorado Essential Skills:

1. Composing, improvising, and arranging help to synthesize ideas in original and surprising ways. (Creativity and Innovation)
2. Composing, improvising, and arranging cause one to innovate from failure, connect learning across domains, and recognize new opportunities. (Adaptability and Flexibility)
3. Creating music requires consideration of purpose, audience, planning, and delivery. (Civic Engagement)

Inquiry Questions:

1. How can music help to tell a story?
2. Why are phrases important in music?
3. How does music notation help a musical creator share and save their music?

Expand and Connect:

1. Students can use technology to create, sample and manipulate sound effects. They can also use the internet as a resource for sounds.
2. Exploring how music fits a story can lead to the connection between music and language arts.
3. Using expressive elements in creating music can give students a deeper understanding of these fundamentals.
4. Creating patterns in music can provide insight to identifying patterns in the world around them.

Colorado Essential Skills:

1. Reading and analyzing music increases knowledge and development of musical ideas, as well as musical understanding. (Creativity and Innovation)
2. Writing music allows application of knowledge, making informed decisions, and transferring that knowledge to new contexts. (Self-Awareness)
3. Reading and analyzing music are opportunities to look for and value different perspectives expressed by others (Global and Cultural Awareness)

Inquiry Questions:

1. How do melody and rhythm make music interesting?
2. Why is it important to keep a steady beat in certain situations?
3. How will identifying notes and rests help me in performing music?

Expand and Connect:

1. The ability to recognize the patterns that occur in music relates to the patterns that can be found in many disciplines and vocations (mathematics, history, visual art and design, architecture, science).
2. Students can make connections between one and two syllable words to one sound that represents a single beat of music and two equal sounds that represent a single beat of music.
3. Music notation is a visual representation of organized sound and silence.

Colorado Essential Skills:

1. Interpreting expressive musical elements provides an opportunity to recognize personal characteristics, preferences, thoughts, and feelings. (Self-Advocacy and Initiative)
2. Using expressive musical elements provides recognition and awareness of the value in different perspectives expressed by others. (Social Awareness)
3. Using a variety of expressive elements in music demonstrates a willingness to try new things. (Adaptability and Flexibility)

Inquiry Questions:

1. What are ways music can be made more interesting?

Expand and Connect:

1. Music from various cultures changes expressive elements to convey a message.
2. Demonstrating opposites kinesthetically builds long-term memory and connections to literary and societal opposites.

Colorado Essential Skills:

1. Recognizing musical form and structure provides a format to describe cause-and-effect relationships and patterns (Critical Thinking and Analysis)
2. Applying knowledge of musical form and structure allows design parameters to set goals and make informed decisions to learned and new concepts (Self-Awareness)

Inquiry Questions:

1. How do voices and instruments sound different?
2. When people listen to a piece of music, what are they listening for?
3. Why do instruments (or voices) belong to certain families/groups?

Expand and Connect:

1. Various musical styles (folk music, classical music, marches, lullabies, holidays) use an AB pattern and/or introduction or phrases.
2. Describing other disciplines that could have an AB pattern provides a connection to what a pattern is, how it is constructed, and where it can be found.
3. Musical themes, patterns, and textures can be compared to the use of these elements in stories, songs, and other art forms.

Colorado Essential Skills:

1. Articulating the mood of a particular piece of music requires interpretation of aural information to draw conclusions. (Critical Thinking and Analysis)

Inquiry Questions:

1. How can certain movements be more appropriate for one type of music than another?
2. What are some specific elements in music that can change the feelings that are communicated?
3. How do the basic elements of music communicate thoughts or emotions?

Expand and Connect:

1. Looking at a variety of dance styles (e.g., ballet, samba, hip-hop, tap, flamenco) can bring clarity to the idea that different styles of music make us feel and move differently.
2. Ideas and moods expressed through music are conveyed in other areas of the arts (books, movies, theater, dance, performances, commercials.)

Colorado Essential Skills:

1. Experiencing and analyzing music of different cultures helps to identify and explain cultural perspectives. (Global and Cultural Awareness)

Inquiry Questions:

1. How does music that is created for various purposes contribute to a specific experience?
2. How can instruments be used to convey various emotions?
3. How does movement differ from one musical style to another?

Expand and Connect:

1. Observing and imitating movement to a variety of musical styles (including cultural and historical excerpts) provides an understanding of the multitude of ways people can express themselves through music and movement.
2. Using pictures, books and the internet to recognize various instruments by shape and sound develops an initial ability to identify the instruments and their contribution to different musical sounds and styles.