Colorado Academic Standards Online

Use the options below to create customized views of the Colorado Academic Standards. For all standards resources, see the Office of Standards and Instructional Support.

Music - 2019

Eighth Grade/Proficient, Standard 1. Expression of Music

| Read the Colorado Essential Skills | Expand Set of GLEs Below

Prepared Graduates:

1. Apply knowledge and skills through a variety of means to demonstrate musical concepts.

Grade Level Expectation:

1. Perform contrasting pieces of music, making interpretive and expressive choices.

Evidence Outcomes:

Students Can:

Perform music rhythmically correct. (See levels 2-3 in Music Skills Appendix)
Perform music with correct pitches and intonation. (See levels 2-3 in Music Skills Appendix)
Perform music with expressive qualities. (See levels 2-3 in Music Skills Appendix.)

Academic Contexts and Connections:

Colorado Essential Skills:

Performing music requires musicians to innovate from failure, connect learning across domains, and recognize new opportunities. (Entrepreneurial: Informed Risk Taking)
Performing music requires musicians to regulate one's emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in different situations. (Personal: Personal Responsibility)
Students can synthesize information from multiple sources to demonstrate understanding of a topic. (Entrepreneurial: Critical Thinking/Problem Solving)

Inquiry Questions:

How does understanding the structure and context of musical works inform performance?
How do musicians select repertoire?

Expand and Connect:

Performing accurately and expressively requires cognitive demands similar to reading complex texts.
The quality of a performance can illicit different responses from audiences.

Prepared Graduates:

2. Perform with appropriate technique and expressive elements to communicate ideas and emotions.

Grade Level Expectation:

2. Perform music in three or more parts accurately and with technique in order to convey intent.

Evidence Outcomes:

Students Can:

Sing and/or play with correct technique and consistent tone quality, intonation, balance, diction/articulation and phrasing. (See levels 2-3 in Music Skills Appendix)
Respond to conductor's cues of balance and blend while singing or playing in an ensemble.
Demonstrate the ability to adjust elements of music (pitch, rhythm, dynamics, timbre, texture, form). (See levels 3-4 in Music Skills Appendix)

Academic Contexts and Connections:

Colorado Essential Skills:

Singing and playing music requires students to consider purpose, formality of context and audience, and distinct cultural norms when planning and performing musical content, delivery, and expression. (Civic/Interpersonal: Communication)
Performing music requires students to appropriately express one's own emotions, thoughts, and values and identify how they influence musical performances. (Personal: Self-Awareness)
Consider purpose, formality of context and audience, and distinct cultural norms when planning content, mode, delivery, and expression. (Civic/Intrapersonal: Communication)

Inquiry Questions:

How does appropriate performance technique impact a performance and audience response?
How are skills and techniques applied differently when performing in an ensemble?

Expand and Connect:

Musicians scaffold technique and skills to increase access to challenging music.
Musicians connect their personal interests, experiences, ideas, and knowledge with their musical performance.

Prepared Graduates:

3. Demonstrate practice and refinement processes to develop independent musicianship.

Grade Level Expectation:

3. Apply personal and prescribed criteria to develop a practice cycle.

Evidence Outcomes:

Students Can:

Identify and apply personally developed criteria to rehearse, refine, and determine when the music is ready to perform.
Apply self-reflection process to refine musical performance

Academic Contexts and Connections:

Colorado Essential Skills:

Evaluating and refining personal music-making skills allows students to apply knowledge to set goals, make informed decisions and transfer to new contexts. (Personal: Initiative/Self-Direction)
Applying teacher, self, and peer critiques to improve personal musical performance teaches students to focus on learning goals by employing motivation and familiar strategies for engagement and evaluate progress, making necessary changes to stay the course. (Personal: Perseverance/Resilience)
Practice and refinement of musical performance requires students to investigate their own playing skills and form hypotheses and draw conclusions of how best to improve personal musicianship. (Entrepreneurial: Inquiry/Analysis)

Inquiry Questions:

When is a judged performance ready to present?
How does a personal reflection and refinement process improve the overall ensemble performance?

Expand and Connect:

Musicians evaluate and refine their work through openness to new ideas, persistence, and the application of appropriate criteria.
Practicing and refinement develops perseverance, discipline, and an academic mindset.

Music - 2019

Eighth Grade/Proficient, Standard 2. Creation of Music

| Read the Colorado Essential Skills | Expand Set of GLEs Below

Prepared Graduates:

4. Compose, improvise, and arrange sounds and musical ideas to communicate purposeful intent.

Grade Level Expectation:

1. Compose, improvise, and arrange increasingly complex melodic and rhythmic phrases with variations to convey intent.

Evidence Outcomes:

Students Can:

Compose a melody of at least 12-measures using patterns and sequencing adding tonal accompaniment utilizing a variety of notation methods including the use of technology. (See levels 2-3 in Music Skills Appendix)
Improvise a solo vocally and/or instrumentally over a three-chord pattern using varied rhythmic and melodic patterns. (See levels 2-3 in Music Skills Appendix)
Arrange an existing vocal or instrumental composition. (See levels 2-3 in Music Skills Appendix)

Academic Contexts and Connections:

Colorado Essential Skills:

Composing, improvising, and arranging sounds require that students interpret and analyze a variety of musical information/sounds and draw conclusions in order to best convey a purposeful intent. (Entrepreneurial: Critical Thinking/Problem Solving)
Composing, improvising and arranging cause one to innovate from failure, connect learning across domains, and recognize new opportunities. (Entrepreneurial: Informed Risk Taking)
Creating music requires the demonstration of confidence in sharing ideas/feelings. (Professional: Self-Advocacy)

Inquiry Questions:

How do musicians use different sources to generate creative ideas?
What are the contexts/clues that a musician should consider when making improvisational decisions?
What are some differences between arranging and composing music and why do you think both are important?

Expand and Connect:

Understanding the basic structural elements used to write short musical phrases provides a foundation to understanding the structural elements of more complex musical compositions.
Technology can provide new platforms for creating and sharing musical ideas.

Music - 2019

Eighth Grade/Proficient, Standard 3. Theory of Music

| Read the Colorado Essential Skills | Expand Set of GLEs Below

Prepared Graduates:

5. Read, write, and analyze the elements of music through a variety of means to demonstrate musical literacy.

Grade Level Expectation:

1. Read, notate, and identify by name or function complex standard symbols for rhythm, pitch articulation, dynamics, tempo, and form.

Evidence Outcomes:

Students Can:

Identify by name or function and notate musical symbols. (See level 3 in Music Skills Appendix)
Sight-read, observing all musical symbols, tempo indications, expressive indications, and technical indications. (See level 2 in the Music Skills Appendix)
Notate melodic and/or rhythmic patterns of two to four measures. (See levels 2-3 in the Music Skills Appendix)

Academic Contexts and Connections:

Colorado Essential Skills:

Sight-reading requires one to learn from failure and develop confidence to try again. (Entrepreneurial: Informed Risk Taking)
Building sight-reading skills develops the habit of setting goals. (Personal: Perseverance/Resilience)

Inquiry Questions:

How do different types of notation relate to different musical cultures, genres, styles, or instrumentation?
How do sight-reading skills accelerate learning of music?

Expand and Connect:

Musicians consider historical and cultural contexts when analyzing music.

Prepared Graduates:

5. Read, write, and analyze the elements of music through a variety of means to demonstrate musical literacy.

Grade Level Expectation:

2. Analyze structure, use of musical elements, and expressive choices within musical compositions.

Evidence Outcomes:

Students Can:

Describe the way in which elements of music and form are manipulated and how it informs the response to music.
Analyze a musical excerpt and describe the composer's application of musical structures and elements. (See levels 2-3 in Music Skills Appendix)

Academic Contexts and Connections:

Colorado Essential Skills:

Analyzing music requires one to draw on prior knowledge and make connections. (Entrepreneurial: Critical Thinking/Problem Solving)

Inquiry Questions:

How do musicians extrapolate the structure of music from a single part?
How are the skills used to analyze music similar to the skills used to analyze literature?

Expand and Connect:

Sight-reading strengthens the visual-spatial reasoning skills required in other disciplines.

Prepared Graduates:

6. Aurally identify and differentiate musical elements to interpret and respond to music.

Grade Level Expectation:

3. Aurally identify and differentiate elements of a piece including chords and harmonic progression.

Evidence Outcomes:

Students Can:

Listen to a rhythmic phrase of four or more measures and notate the correct rhythm.
Listen to and identify chord changes in harmonic progression.
Listen to and notate a simple, diatonic melody with stepwise motion.

Academic Contexts and Connections:

Colorado Essential Skills:

Aurally differentiating between musical elements requires one to make connections and draw conclusions. (Entrepreneurial: Inquiry/Analysis)
Pose and respond to questions or ideas and contribute to a discussion related to musical styles/genres. (Personal: Self-Awareness)

Inquiry Questions:

How does rhythmic dictation improve sight-reading skills?
How does identification of chord changes reinforce the understanding of mathematical relationships in music?

Expand and Connect:

Aurally differentiating intervals and chordal relationships strengthens understanding of the mathematical nature of music.

Prepared Graduates:

6. Aurally identify and differentiate musical elements to interpret and respond to music.

Grade Level Expectation:

4. Aurally identify and differentiate characteristics and expressive elements of different musical styles/genres.

Evidence Outcomes:

Students Can:

Listen to several pieces of music. Create a listening map describing each genre based on multiple musical characteristics such as form, instrumentation, lyrical content, vocal or instrumental nuances, and application of dynamics.

Academic Contexts and Connections:

Colorado Essential Skills:

Participating in discussions to analyze unfamiliar music requires communication and collaboration skills. (Civic/Interpersonal: Communication)

Inquiry Questions:

How is comparing and contrasting music similar to analyzing genres in literature?

Expand and Connect:

Listening to and recognizing characteristics of different genres and styles of music builds skills necessary to analyze and understand characteristics of different genres and styles of other disciplines such as literature.

Music - 2019

Eighth Grade/Proficient, Standard 4. Aesthetic Valuation of Music

| Read the Colorado Essential Skills | Expand Set of GLEs Below

Prepared Graduates:

7. Evaluate and respond to music using criteria to make informed musical decisions.

Grade Level Expectation:

1. Evaluate and assess the quality of musical performances or compositions using student-created criteria.

Evidence Outcomes:

Students Can:

Develop and describe personal criteria for evaluating musical performances.
Listen to a performance and assign a quality rating based on student-created criteria. Explain and justify the rating.
Justify personal interpretations of contrasting pieces of music and explain how creators or performers apply the elements of music and expressive qualities within genres, cultures, and historical periods to convey expressive intent.

Academic Contexts and Connections:

Colorado Essential Skills:

Creating personal criteria for evaluation of music requires one to form a hypothesis about what defines quality. (Entrepreneurial: Inquiry/Analysis)
Evaluating performances by others allows one to develop ideas and apply critiques to one's own performance. (Professional: Self Advocacy)

Inquiry Questions:

How do we judge the quality of musical work(s) and performances using our own criteria?
How do music evaluators use knowledge and skills to make informed musical decisions?

Expand and Connect:

The ability to critically evaluate performances provides necessary information essential to improving performance skills.
Justifying one's own personal critique of a performance requires the evaluator to define quality, apply reason, and cite evidence.

Prepared Graduates:

8. Connect musical ideas and works with societal, cultural and historical context to understand relationships and influences.

Grade Level Expectation:

2. Identify and describe ways in which music is selected for use in society.

Evidence Outcomes:

Students Can:

Apply personally developed criteria for selecting music of contrasting styles for a specific social event.
Describe how entertainment and social media impact personal music preferences.

Academic Contexts and Connections:

Colorado Essential Skills:

Selecting music for consumption by others requires one to act on creative ideas to make a tangible and useful product. (Entrepreneurial: Informed Risk Taking)
Selecting music for an audience requires one to consider purpose, formality of context, and distinct cultural norms. (Civic/Interpersonal: Communication)

Inquiry Questions:

What criteria do we use when choosing music for others?
How does the ease of global communication influence musical choices?

Expand and Connect:

We can communicate intent through music choices and programming.
The study of music develops informed consumers of music in society.

Prepared Graduates:

8. Connect musical ideas and works with societal, cultural and historical context to understand relationships and influences.

Grade Level Expectation:

3. Identify and describe musical characteristics and performance styles of different world cultures.

Evidence Outcomes:

Students Can:

Describe the use, performance technique, and cultural significance of instruments and vocal techniques specific to local or regional culture.
Construct a personal listening repertoire that represents various styles and cultures.

Academic Contexts and Connections:

Colorado Essential Skills:

Examining music from different cultures encourages the use of multiple perspectives. (Civic/Interpersonal: Global/Cultural Awareness)
Studying music of world cultures encourages one to make observations and draw conclusions. (Entrepreneurial: Inquiry/Analysis)

Inquiry Questions:

How does learning about a culture's music promote understanding and acceptance of that culture?
How is music a form of cultural transmission?

Expand and Connect:

Examining the cultural influences in popular music creates opportunities to understand similarities between cultures.

Prepared Graduates:

8. Connect musical ideas and works with societal, cultural and historical context to understand relationships and influences.

Grade Level Expectation:

4. Compare and contrast uses for music in historical events.

Evidence Outcomes:

Students Can:

Select musical works from two or more historical periods and compare the various roles the music played (e.g., historical record, propaganda, patriotism).
Identify how different historical contexts inform performance and results in different musical effects.

Academic Contexts and Connections:

Colorado Essential Skills:

Analyzing media messages in popular music from a time period allows one to assess the influence of music on the outcome of specific historical events. (Professional: Information Literacy)
Analyzing music from historical periods requires the listener to make hypotheses and draw conclusions. (Entrepreneurial: Inquiry/Analysis)

Inquiry Questions:

What role does music play in historical events?
How does historical context influence the way we might perform a particular musical work?

Expand and Connect:

We can learn about the human experience during a historical period by examining its music.
Musicians often consider historic perspectives when making creative decisions.

Need Help? Submit questions or requests for assistance to bruno_j@cde.state.co.us