This plan is designed to reinforce students’ ability to recognize and apply whole step/half step patterns to the guitar and foster a deeper understanding of how pitches are organized on the guitar fretboard. Understanding the whole step/half step concept and the ability to apply it are important precursors to successful sight reading and navigation of the fretboard.

This instructional plan provides the teacher with an outline and resources to guide music students through the process of selecting and pursuing a career path in the 21st century workplace, enabling students to understand music as a field of knowledge.

Students will identify, define and use basic standard and instrument specific notation for pitch with a focus on fluency. The objective of Note Reading Olympics is to assess and improve note reading skills. Students aim to identify as many notes as possible in 60 seconds. Students are able to achieve four levels based on difficulty: Olympic Trials, Bronze, Silver, Gold and Olympic Legend. The resources in this document are specifically designed for orchestra, but the lesson could be adapted for any music discipline.

In this plan, students will research, discuss, and present ways in which music was used to effect change during various historical periods or events. This particular plan will use the American Civil Rights Movement, South African Apartheid, America’s participation in Vietnam, and current events as examples.

In this lesson, students will learn to identify different note and rest values and how these come together to form short rhythmic patterns. Students will perform rhythmic patterns on their selected instrument using the ‘Rhythm Randomizer’ tool.

Students will record themselves and use a provided rubric to evaluate growth in their playing. This lesson can be used with individual or ensemble performances.

This lesson will introduce students to proper posture, rest position, and playing position for their instrument. Students will demonstrate understanding of these concepts and their ability to teach them to others.

This plan will introduce students to 12-Bar Blues progressions that include Slow Change, Quick Change, and Turnaround options. Students will use the Blues Scale to improvise over the 12-Bar blues progressions.

Students will use creativity, critical thinking skills, and collaboration to develop and produce podcasts that inform and educate listeners on various musical topics.

This plan will provide students with the resources to clean, restring, and tune a classical guitar. Students will also learn about different string types and which kinds of knots are used to string guitars.  

Students will demonstrate understanding of rhythmic symbols and their values (whole, half, quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes/rests). Students will create note trees to make connections between musical rhythms and mathematics. Students will apply their knowledge of rhythm to express their musical ideas and engage more deeply with music.

Students will experiment with and compose rhythmic grooves to use with their warm-up exercises. Using an online tool, students will create their own backing tracks to put the “fun” back in fundamentals!

This plan will introduce the foundational skills and methods to develop successful sight-reading through guided practice. These methods provide students with the awareness and confidence to become capable and independent at the sight-reading process.

This plan will provide the instructor with an outline and resources to direct students through the formation of a student virtual performance portfolio. Students will use their virtual performance portfolio to collect both individual and ensemble performing artifacts throughout the year to evaluate and critique performances, formulate and justify personal responses to music, and monitor individual practice and progress toward goals.

This plan will provide the teacher and student with the resources to engage in kind and constructive feedback. Students will use music terminology to evaluate, define, and provide feedback to peer performances.

In this plan, students will use the melody from the jazz standard “St. James Infirmary” as a springboard to improvisation. The students will utilize a call and response technique to learn the melody. Then students will learn several ways they can utilize the content within the melody of a song to improvise.

Students will explore copyright and intellectual property standards as they relate to music, music technology, and digital citizenship. Students will explore copyright law, investigate the trends of copyright throughout history, and collaborate to propose their own “Copyright Act” for the future.

This lesson guides students through the beginning stages of articulation. Focus is limited to producing clear, focused tone, and clean legato articulation.

This plan guides teachers in exercising audiation techniques to develop aural skills for young musicians. These skills can be continually developed in warm-ups and literature in call-and-response style instruction.

This webinar provides an overview of the 2020 Music Standards of Learning and is adapted to meet the needs of Orchestra Directors.