Introducing MusicFirst Elementary
After 4 years of work, thousands of pages of lessons plans, more than 1,000 interactive resources, and the tireless work of an amazing team of teachers and developers from our award-winning partners Charanga, I am so very proud to introduce you to a truly revolutionary music curriculum for Grades K-5 - MusicFirst Elementary, powered by Charanga. Unlike other online collections of resources that are targeted to the elementary music teacher, this is the first complete sequential K-5 music curriculum to hit the market in over a decade, and it is truly spectacular. The following provides an overview of what the curriculum includes, and most importantly, how you can preview it for yourself.
MusicFirst Elementary is very user-friendly and clearly laid out. It is also customizable and provides busy elementary music educators with everything they need, all in one place. The curriculum includes:
K-5 curriculum with 36 comprehensive lessons and activities for each grade level covering a wide variety of current and relevant topics.
Over 1,000 interactive teaching resources.
Ready-made, fun-packed lessons that are aligned with the National Core Arts Standards.
Custom-built tools and resources to spark creativity and accelerate learning.
Lesson plans with sheet music for all instruments.
The My Workspace area lets you create your own lessons, resources and units.
The spiral design of this curriculum provides the opportunity for students to be immersed in music-making activities that deepen over the course of the elementary grades. Musical elements that are introduced to young students are continually revisited in more complex and intricate ways as they progress through subsequent grade levels.
Once you have logged into the platform, you can click on a specific grade level to access a huge reservoir of materials just for that grade. Included are the full Learning Objectives by both musical elements and activities, a guide to the National Standards alignment, assessments, printables, and informative guides to how everything functions at that specific grade level. If you scroll down on the grade level page, you’ll be introduced to the Unit 1 activities, with direct links to plan and teach the lesson. Once you select a specific lesson, you’ll land on the Lesson Page.
2nd Grade - Unit 1 Week 6 - Yo Tengo Una Casita - Lesson Plan
Each lesson plan has a number of activities that can be accessed from the left menu. For the lesson plan shown above, there are 4 activities and a quiz that are centered around the song being taught - Yo Tengo Una Casita. There is an understanding activity, a listening activity, and learning activity, and a performance activity. Once the students have gone through all of the activities (meant to be taught in either one or two class sessions depending on how often you see your students), you can give them a quiz to check for understanding and document their learning.
2nd Grade - Unit 1 Week 6 activity - Yo Tengo Una Casita - Perform
One of the MANY things that I absolutely love about the way this curriculum is structured is that there are tons of wonderful original and public domain songs used, with wonderfully produced, high quality audio files that allow you to both hear the songs and to help you accompany student performances. The songs are culturally relevant and reflect the diversity of the student populations that we teach.
Creative Tools in MusicFirst Elementary powered by Charanga
In addition to all of the amazing curricular content, there is also a suite of included Creative Tools - including Rhythm Grids to help students understand musical notation, reading music and composing; Quickbeats that allow students to start making their own beats right away in a fun and intuitive interface; YuStudio which is a fully-fledged digital audio workstation; Music Notepad which allows students to start experimenting with notating their own music; Music Explorer which is a fun collection of 20 musical games covering a variety of musical concepts; and Percussion Writer which allows students to write their own rhythmic patterns in a fun and powerful way. And yes, these are all included at no additional charge.
MusicFIrst Elementary is available exclusively from MusicFirst beginning today! We are offering it at an introductory price of $695/year with unlimited users in a single school building. You can sign up for early access to this amazing curriculum by following this link and filling out the form. You’ll get free 30-day access to evaluate it for yourself.