Introducing the ALL NEW MusicFirst Elementary!

I am absolutely THRILLED to announce that we launched the ALL NEW MusicFirst Elementary this past Friday - and it is awesome. There are really only a handful of full elementary music curricula out there, and although I am definitely biased, I think this is the best one available. We have an incredible team here at MusicFirst that has spend the last 18 months listening to elementary music educators from around the United States and then creating the lesson plans, songs, sheet music, supplementary materials, along with an unmatched suite of creative tools to update our unique K-5 spiral curriculum to provide the very best educational experience for young musicians. We’ve also update our strap line to reflect this: Learn Music. Love Music. I think it’s perfect. So what’s new and why should you consider adopting this curriculum into your teaching? Read on…

We all know that elementary general music is one of the most challenging jobs in music education. Teachers can see hundreds of students each week, often across six grade levels, with very little planning time between classes. They are expected to teach singing, movement, instruments, music literacy, listening, composition and creativity, sometimes all in the same lesson. That was one of the reasons we created MusicFirst Elementary in the first place. MusicFirst Elementary provides a complete, spiral K–5 general music curriculum aligned with the National Core Arts Standards. The curriculum includes 36 lessons at every grade level, thousands of pages of lesson plans and documentation, an extensive library of repertoire and sheet music, and a collection of interactive tools for students and teachers.

Importantly, the curriculum itself is not being replaced. Teachers who already use MusicFirst Elementary will still recognize the lessons, repertoire and overall approach. The goal of the redesign is to make that curriculum easier to navigate, easier to customize and more practical to use during an actual music class. One of the biggest changes is a redesigned approach to units and lessons. Teachers will have more flexibility in deciding how they move through activities rather than feeling that they need to follow a predetermined path. The lesson flow has also been improved, making it easier to move between the different parts of a lesson.

There is also considerably more emphasis on active music making. The updated MusicFirst Elementary adds new opportunities for singing, movement, playing and creating. Teachers will find movement and vocal warm-ups as well as new experiences using ukulele, Boomwhackers and barred instruments. New Enrich & Extend activities provide additional options when teachers want to take a concept further or adapt a lesson for a particular group of students.

Creativity is also becoming a larger part of the platform. The new version includes eight integrated Creative Tools that allow students to interact with musical ideas rather than simply consume content. One of the newest is First Composer, which gives elementary students a simple way to create and document their own musical ideas.

My personal favorite update is the new Collections section of the site. Here you will find hundreds of songs that are outside of the curriculum, and include Seasonal Songs, Hello & Goodbye Songs, Songs from Around the World (sung by the culture bearers of those places), and Spanish Language Songs. When I taught elementary general music, I didn’t really have access to any curriculum like this. Instead, I based my curriculum on the calendar: October focused on spooky Halloween songs, April on songs about Spring. I LOVE this new section and I am sure that teachers will too.

What elementary music curriculum would be complete without resources for Kodaly and Orff? MusicFirst Elementary has some excellent resources, including brand new Orffestrations of dozens of songs, and hundreds of songs that have been coded to the specific Kodaly syllables and hand signs that are used - drawing from both the songs in the curriculum as well as the new ones in the Collections. Amazing!!

So why should you sign up for a FREE 30-day trial to MusicFirst Elementary?‍ ‍Not only because it’s a fantastic alternative to other curricula, but perhaps the most importantly is idea that this new curriculum update is all about flexibility. A first-year elementary music teacher may want to follow the curriculum closely. An experienced teacher may want to use it as a framework while incorporating favorite songs, activities and teaching approaches. The new MusicFirst Elementary is designed to provide teachers with a strong K-5 music curriculum without dictating exactly how they need to teach it. That combination of structure, flexibility and active music making is what I am most excited about as we introduce the next generation of MusicFirst Elementary.