Many educators can fall into the trap of waiting for the “perfect” time to start planning for the year ahead.

There’s never a bad time to think carefully and creatively about your goals for your students, and how best to implement them. I would suggest that wherever you are in your year, it is the perfect time to start planning.

This series will build on the material from this post, and continue to break down the planning process so it’s manageable, and meaningful.

You can also find examples of long-range plans in The Planning Binder.

Step 1: Curriculum Outline

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A curriculum outline (or concept table) is a broad overview of your entire school curriculum, across all grade levels. It’s a big-picture look at where your students have been, and where they’re going.

Writing Your Curriculum Outline: Where to Start

There are plenty of things to consider when putting together a curriculum outline.

Blank Curriculum Outline Victoria Boler Planning

How often do you see your students?
How long are your classes?
How long have you been teaching these students?
How in-depth with each concept do you want to go?

The answers to these questions tell you what concepts you can expect to cover at each grade level.

IF YOU'RE MAKING FROM SCRATCH:

If you're making your curriculum outline from scratch instead of purchasing the planning kit, list the elements of music you want to cover along the top of the page. Then list the grades you teach along the lefthand side. In each cell, write the concepts you want to cover in your entire program.

My Curriculum Outline (2018 - 2019)

For reference, here is one example of a curriculum outline. These are very dependent on your particular teaching situation, so here is some context:

I teach TK - 5th grade choir and general music. When students enter 4th grade, they transition from general music to their choice of either choir, band, or orchestra.
I see primary grades (TK - 3rd) on a six day rotation. I see upper grades (4th - 5th grade) twice a week.
I am entering my second full year at my school, and the curriculum reflects that while my upper grades have made progress, there are still concepts that they haven't covered. (You'll notice that the upper grades are working on almost the same concepts.)

Your curriculum outline will change. If you’re like me, at a fairly new school, it might look different every year as your older students progress through your music sequence and are able to move to more advanced concepts.

Read a complete post about creating a curriculum outline here.

With your curriculum outline complete, we can hone in on specific grade levels with perhaps the most important step of planning: repertoire selection.

Song Lists - The Core of Your Curriculum

One of the most practical things I do to prepare for the school year is creating a list of songs that I can use for each grade level.

As music teachers, our repertoire is our curriculum, so the songs we choose are incredibly important. Our repertoire is the core of our students’ experience.

How to Choose Songs for Your Classroom:

“Let us take our children seriously! Everything else follows from this... only the best is good enough for a child.”

— Zoltan Kodaly

The music we choose can certainly be simple and fun, but it’s important to remember that our repertoire selection is the primary tool that shapes students’ musical development. How do we measure the quality of our music selection?

Questions to Guide the Selection Process:

Is the song interesting from a musical standpoint?
Are the lyrics relatable to a child?
Do you like the song?
Does it meet your curriculum goals?
Can you use it in a fresh, creative way in your classroom?

You can read a complete post about choosing repertoire for you music room here.

Creating Your Song Lists:

I use this template for creating my song lists.

Referencing back to your concept table, list out the concepts you want to teach for each grade level across the top of the page. Then brainstorm songs you might use to teach each musical element.

Be sure to consider any special concerts or holidays you’ll want to include throughout the year.

The number of songs you choose is up to you. For younger grades you might choose a fairly large selection since you’ll probably go through lesson materials quickly. It’s likely that you’ll choose fewer songs for upper grades, since their attention span is longer and they can dive deeper into the song material.

IF YOU'RE MAKING FROM SCRATCH:

List all the songs you want to use for that particular grade level along the lefthand side of your paper. Then write out the concepts for that grade level along the top. Mark which songs cover which concepts.

Where to Find Songs:

Here are some of my favorite resources for selecting classroom material:

150 American Folk Songs (especially good for younger grades)
Sail Away: 155 American Folk Songs (great for upper grades)
Folk Songs North America Sings (Again, great for upper grades)
American Folk Songs for Children
Vamos a Cantar
Roots and Branches

Music Planning Tip:

You don’t need to fill out every single detail at the beginning of the year.
Leave yourself room to be inspired by a book in October, a workshop in February, or a website idea in May. The school year is long, and you’ll think of new things to add to your plans as the year continues.

Curriculum is mapped out, and songs are selected. Next we'll look at creating a scope and sequence, and developing teaching strategies in a concept plan.

Curriculum Planning Elementary Music — Coming Up Next

In this post we covered how to map out concepts in a curriculum outline. We also looked at when we can teach those concepts throughout the year in a scope and sequence. Now, it’s time to start considering repertoire.
>>>> Read: Planning Ahead - Mapping Out Your Ideal Music Curriculum, and A Scope and Sequence for Elementary Music

Repertoire may be the most important part of the planning process, because the musical material we choose is the curriculum.

These songs and pieces will introduce students to new ideas, provide a springboard for creativity, and help students become awareness of their own musical development.

Because the repertoire is the curriculum, we want to make sure its high quality.

“Let us take our children seriously! Everything else follows from this... only the best is good enough for a child.”

— Zoltan Kodaly

Here are some of the criteria I use for selecting musical material. These criteria have been sourced from several books, including Artful, Playful, Mindful by Jane Frazee and First, We Sing from Susan Brumfield.

How to choose repertoire for your elementary music class

1. Choose Material that is High Quality

It can be simple, and it can be fun. But remember that the repertoire we use will shape our students musically.

I look for two main things when selecting music that is artistic: the lyrics, and the music itself.

Musically:

Look or songs with interesting melody lines or rhythms. As we choose repertoire, it's best to get a variety of material so that we don’t end up with all the same chord structure or time signature in each piece. This can be tricky in some of the younger grades when their musical vocabulary is limited - but it’s not impossible!

For melodic pieces, sing the melody without the words. Is the melody interesting on its own? For pieces without pitch (spoken rhymes or unpitched percussion pieces), do the same thing. Is the rhythm interesting enough to play back in your head on its own?

Lyrically:

Does the poetry explain something about life as a child? Is it gratifying to speak without a melody? Is it particularly beautiful or insightful or humorous? All these things contribute to the lyrical quality of a song.

One of the best ways to test this to write out the lyrics or speak them by themselves. This will give you an idea about the extent to which the poetry can stand alone, without melody or harmony to aid it.

We select the musical influences from which our students will grow - and that's pretty exciting.

2. Choose Material You Like

You’ll spend a lot of time with this material. You’ll likely sing or play it several times a week as you rotate through different classes in each grade level. Additionally, you’ll be using it to sing, play games, play instruments, and create.

Since you’ll use this material so much, it’s important that you like it!

I used to think it was selfish for me to think about my own preferences when selecting songs or pieces for my class. Now I realize that having a connection to the musical material isn’t optional - it’s one of the core criteria.

As a trained musician you have developed an ear for quality music. If a song strikes you as cheesy, there’s probably a good reason. If a melody seems unnatural to you, you have a legitimate reason to keep it out of your repertoire.

Personal preference takes a key role when choosing material for your year.

3. Choose Material that Meets Your Curriculum Goals

Take a look at the songs that intrinsically are of high quality and that you would love to teach. Which of these meet the musical goals you have for your students?

Of course not every song needs to have a literary tie-in. Some material is worth teaching for its beauty. Some is worth teaching because of how fun it is to play.

In the same way that we read The Chronicles of Narnia to young children who can’t necessarily read and write every word in it, so we also expose children to music of other cultures, classical music, jazz music, etc. This music may be beyond their reach literacy wise, but not beyond their understanding or enjoyment as young musicians.

That said, it would be a shame for students to leave our classrooms without the ability to record their musical ideas in notation or recognize the form of a pop song. For that reason, I usually pick about 5 pieces of material (songs, rhymes, movement activities, or instrumental pieces) for each target element in my curriculum.

These pieces need to meet the following criteria:

The target element is musically and lyrically obvious.

Look for material that uses the target rhythm or melody on a main word in the sentence, or a strong beat. The target element should also exist naturally in the music.

For example, a 2 over 3 rhythm in 6/8 time is technically an eighth note pattern but students won't get it intuitively. Finding mi re do in a la-based minor song is technically still mi re do, but students will have a hard time hearing it and applying it to other songs.

Think about what is natural to point out in a song; what the students will naturally hear.

The Singing Tessitura and Intervals are Appropriate:

The appropriate range of a song will change depending on the age of your students. Here is a quick reference I use when looking at a song’s tessitura.

Remember, the range of the song may be different than the tessitura of the song.

These intervals are sourced from Kennieh H. Philip’s book, Teaching Kids to Sing.

It’s also good to look at the intervals in the song to make sure your students can sing them tunefully. Especially when working on target melodic elements, tuneful singing is essential.

Avoiding half steps or large leaps for young singers will help them be more successful.

Our repertoire should move us toward our curriculum goals.

4. Get Creative!

Look through each song and decide how this song will actually live in your classroom - the shape it will actually take.

Some questions to consider:

How could you teach the song? (Read about how to introduce a song here)
Can it tie into any programs you have coming up? (Read about informances here)
Is there room in this song for students to apply their own musical creativity? (Read tips about songs for improvisation here)
How would it transfer to instruments?
Is there text painting that could be emphasized?
Is there a story or strong emotion you could act out?
Is there creative material students could use to create an ostinato?

The higher quality the work is (from point #1), the easier it is to take it apart and explore it piece by piece. And once you know why you have chosen that particular piece in your curriculum (from point #3), it’s easy to look for creative paths to enhance the purpose of the piece. You’ll probably be especially motivated to give this some serious thought because you actually enjoy the piece your students are working on (from point #2)

Where to Look for Songs

There’s never a bad time to think carefully creatively about your goals for your students, even if you’re in the middle of the school year.

Click here to read about where to find songs for a grade-level song list. When you have your songs, read about how to analyze them here.

If you want a collection of material that meet the criteria in this post for me, check out The Planning Binder. It has a set of songs and rhymes you can use in your classroom right away.

Click here to learn more