Rivendell has a rich musical tradition. From our Spring Program, to our class musicals and group sing, there is always something musical happening around here! Music classes at Rivendell are centered around the National Standards for Music Education:
- Singing, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music.
- Performing on instruments, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music.
- Improvising melodies, variations, and accompaniments.
- Composing and arranging music within specified guidelines.
- Reading and notating music.
- Listening to, analyzing, and describing music.
- Evaluating music and music performances.
- Understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts.
- Understanding music in relation to history and culture.
What that looks like in a typical musical class is students participating in singing, dancing, movement, drama, improvisation, performing, listening, creating and exploring activities. We explore many instruments in class, including recorder for students in Middle Kids and Older Kids classes. Once a year, each grade combination learn and perform a short musical. Working on the musicals is often the students’ favorite part of music class, they have a lot of fun and really grow together as a group.
Music inherently supports the whole child, with connections in literacy, mathematics, social studies, science and gross motor/fine motor skills.
Group Sing
In addition to regular music classes twice per week, our whole school has a tradition called “Group Sing”, where we come together once a week to sing our favorite songs and sometimes enjoy a special guest musician too.