Music education provides students with many opportunities for self-expression and assists them to develop to their full potential. It helps students to make sense of sound and to appreciate the aesthetic qualities in the sounds of natural and technological environments. Students also learn unique approaches to problem solving through the active and reflective processes of both listening to and making music.
Literacy in music involves the development of knowledge and skills relating to styles, genres, technologies, and musical structures. It implies an active appreciation of the conventions and contexts that relate to creating, to performing, and to critically evaluating musical compositions and performances.
The development of aural skills is intrinsic to all music learning. As students listen to music, they develop understandings about music history, biography, and theory. They are actively listening and developing aural sensitivity while composing and performing, and they enhance their understandings of the world through listening to music within and from diverse musical contexts.
Music in the New Zealand Curriculum promotes the musical heritages of New Zealand's many diverse cultures. In particular, students should have opportunities to learn about the genres and styles of traditional and contemporary Māori music.
Music education enables all students to contribute to the cultural life of their schools, families, and communities through making and sharing music. It also makes available to students a wide range of future opportunities in arts-related employment.
The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum, page 53
http://www.tki.org.nz/r/arts/curriculum/statement/pg53_e.php
Music in the New Zealand curriculum
The music exemplars relate to:
- the arts curriculum strands
- a range of achievement objectives
- a variety of contexts.
The selected exemplars represent a variety of rich contexts in which students and teachers share quality teaching and learning experiences. The depth and breadth of the features within any one exemplar illustrate the layers and connections in music learning. The principal aspects integrated within the generic term "music" are represented in the music matrix (see the left-most column) as key aspects of learning. Each exemplar focuses on one key aspect of learning and illustrates other key aspects.
Learning in music embodies important broad conceptual understandings in different dimensions. These include:
- The personal dimension: the cognitive, emotional, physical, and spiritual understandings relating to self-esteem and personal identity.
- The cultural dimension: the exploration and expression of inherited beliefs and traditions, including an appreciation of diversity and a sense of the identities of others.
- The artistic dimension: problem solving; creative, imaginative, active, and reflective responses in, through, and about music.
- The aesthetic dimension: responses to the expressive qualities of sound; appreciating and valuing music.
- The social dimension: investigation of the role of music in different societies; co-operative learning through music making.
- The historical dimension: learning about the music of the world in past and present contexts.
- The scientific dimension: investigating the relationship between the acoustical, physical, mathematical, and technological properties of sound.
Learning to read, interpret, and use music and music notation parallels and reinforces the acquisition of language literacy skills. Students' experience and analysis of beat and rhythm, harmony, and tonal relationships can be related to the growth of skills in numeracy.
Introducing the music exemplars
The music exemplars have been selected to illustrate many of the key aspects of learning in the musical arts. Each exemplar reflects one of many possible contexts and a variety of approaches to teaching and learning in music.
Collectively, the music exemplars are intended to support teaching, indicate progression, and provide a framework for ongoing formative practices – they are not offered as a programme of learning in their own right. Teachers are encouraged to relate these exemplars directly to The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum and to the Ministry of Education's resource materials in print and electronic formats and online.
See also:
References
Resources
The music exemplars can also be viewed on the double CD-ROM The New Zealand Curriculum Exemplars: The Arts on CD-ROM (item 30154) that was distributed to New Zealand schools with the print versions of the exemplars.
Level 1
Exploring Pitch
The students in this exemplar explore the range and quality of their voices to experiment with changes in pitch. They create and interpret graphic representations of pitch changes and reinforce their learning in the context of a familiar song. (Print, CD-ROM, online)
Exploring Rhythm
The students in this exemplar recognise and respond to contrasts in different elements of music heard in Edvard Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" through rhythmic movement. They are able to keep a steady beat and to independently play a rhythmic pattern in an ensemble when others around them are playing a different pattern. (CD-ROM, online)
Level 2
Interpreting Rhythmic Notation
These students, who have experienced many of the elements of music, listen and respond to rhythmic patterns and learn to read, play from, and write basic rhythmic notations. (Print, CD-ROM, online)
Level 3
Creating a Soundscape
These students create, notate, and perform a soundscape that is based on a poem they have read and interpreted, using their instruments to express contrasting happy and sad moods. (CD-ROM, online)
Listening to Music
Over several sessions, the students listened to and reflected on a range of music. In the exemplar, they are shown relating to two very different pieces of music. They are thinking creatively and critically and are able to use a musical vocabulary. (CD-ROM, online)
Performing Waiata Pōwhiri
The students featured in this exemplar are confident and competent singers and experienced performers, and they understand the kaupapa of kapa haka. In this exemplar, they learn and perform a waiata-ā-ringa for a school pōwhiri. They also perform and discuss two chant styles of waitata pōwhiri: haka and oriori. (Print, CD-ROM, online)
Level 3/4
Musical Talk
The students in this exemplar create, notate, and perform original music based on a pentatonic scale, and related to a story with an Asian setting that they had previously written. Individual students write music relating to a character or theme from their shared story and combine these individually generated pieces into a group performance. As part of their work, the teacher encourages them to think in terms of musical "conversations" (responding to musical phrases with phrases of their own) and to focus on using musical devices. (CD-ROM, online)
Level 4
Composing a Hip-hop Song
These students can play at least one musical instrument, have some experience in audio recording, and are familiar with group composition and performance. They compose and perform an original hip-hop song based on features they have analysed in a recorded hip-hop song. (Print, CD-ROM, online)
Level 5
Composing Using Music Technology
The students regularly work in the music technology laboratory with their teacher. They are shown using music technology to explore and improvise within the twelve-bar blues structure. They then compose and notate a short twelve-bar blues instrumental piece. (Print, CD-ROM, online)
Performing and Evaluating an Instrumentation
This exemplar shows students learning to read, play, transcribe, and transpose a musical arrangement in order to create their own instrumentation for classroom performance. They are able to use appropriate musical vocabulary to describe their critical thinking about complex musical issues, and demonstrate advanced musical literacy. (CD-ROM, online)
Reference
Ministry of Education (2001). The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum. Wellington: Learning Media.
Print version of music teachers' notes (PDF, 75kb)
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