Performing Arts in 2nd Grade
Students in Kindergarten through Second Grade explore music through play. Movement and vocal participation are key components of their curriculum and each class is structured around strategic games or activities that reinforce spatial awareness, vocal exploration, healthy vocal habits, fine and gross motor skills, and steady beat recognition. To enhance their social and personal development, students learn to share, cooperate, take turns, perform in front of their peers, and experience personal success through performance.
During third trimester, a theater component is added to the general music curriculum. Students present a demonstration of knowledge at the Spring Arts Festival (their performance changes from year-to-year depending on the theme of the festival). The performance is a combination of creative movement, choreography, small spoken scenes, pantomime, poetry, and vocal music.
Students in 2nd Grade will:
- Find and maintain a steady beat at a wide variety of tempos
- Practice matching vocal pitch
- Map out visual contour of a melody
- Move expressively to live and recorded music
- Play a wide variety of classroom instruments (pitched and unpitched)
- Perform simple borduns under vocal performance
- Improvise simple songs and movement sequences
- Recognize music’s unique ability to convey specific emotions
- Act out stories to music
- Study musical traditions from other countries and cultures
- Visually recognize and decode quarter notes, eighth note duplets, quarter rests, and sixteenth note quadruplets
- Critical listening to music recordings
- Perform at different dynamic levels
- Perform at different tempos
- Integrate music into their daily classroom experiences