Reasons for Change in the music Curriculum
Over the last three years, I've been working on some changes to the music curriculum in an effort to better serve the needs of our students and community . Below are some of the issues I wanted to address with these changes:
1. To align our music curriculum with our Honey Creek Mission Statement concerning bringing parents into the classroom and focusing on more project based learning.
2. To address the needs of our students with anxiety related challenges.
3. Encourage community members to see the entire Winter and Spring Concert presentations by shortening the time commitment.
4. Allow parents who can't attend an evening performance, another option to support their children,
5. Allow us to dive deeper into the music, by both allowing more time to focus on the K-3 success at the Informance, and by allowing more time for the performance ensembles in 4-5, and 6-8 grades.
What does that mean?
The most notable change in the program will be that the K-1 and 2-3 classes will be performing only one song together on the Winter All Music Concert.
Why?
We came to this change for several reasons. The most common complaint was that the little ones couldn't be heard during their part of the performance. Also, many of our students at this level deal with anxiety related challenges and the stress of that many pairs of eyes on them at once was too stressful. We also wanted to shorten the overall Winter and Spring Performances in length, to both encourage people with younger students to stay for the whole performance, and to be able to get people out at a decent hour!
What's an INFORMANCE then?
This arrangement allows us to set up an interactive, intimate experience for students and parents called and Informance. An Informance combines the INFORMATION about what we do in music class with a lower stress PERFORMANCE where you, the parents get to participate directly. This de-stresses the idea of a performance where there are HUNDREDS of people WATCHING you, to a fun dance you get to teach your parent! This also allows me to talk to you (the parents) directly about what we do in class and why.
1. To align our music curriculum with our Honey Creek Mission Statement concerning bringing parents into the classroom and focusing on more project based learning.
2. To address the needs of our students with anxiety related challenges.
3. Encourage community members to see the entire Winter and Spring Concert presentations by shortening the time commitment.
4. Allow parents who can't attend an evening performance, another option to support their children,
5. Allow us to dive deeper into the music, by both allowing more time to focus on the K-3 success at the Informance, and by allowing more time for the performance ensembles in 4-5, and 6-8 grades.
What does that mean?
The most notable change in the program will be that the K-1 and 2-3 classes will be performing only one song together on the Winter All Music Concert.
Why?
We came to this change for several reasons. The most common complaint was that the little ones couldn't be heard during their part of the performance. Also, many of our students at this level deal with anxiety related challenges and the stress of that many pairs of eyes on them at once was too stressful. We also wanted to shorten the overall Winter and Spring Performances in length, to both encourage people with younger students to stay for the whole performance, and to be able to get people out at a decent hour!
What's an INFORMANCE then?
This arrangement allows us to set up an interactive, intimate experience for students and parents called and Informance. An Informance combines the INFORMATION about what we do in music class with a lower stress PERFORMANCE where you, the parents get to participate directly. This de-stresses the idea of a performance where there are HUNDREDS of people WATCHING you, to a fun dance you get to teach your parent! This also allows me to talk to you (the parents) directly about what we do in class and why.