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Information for teachers

Chamber Music Beginnings provides exemplary music education programs appropriate to grades 3-6 featuring performances of the highest quality combined with music instruction. The program comprises a year-long structured series of arts education experiences addressing strands II and III and V of the Blueprint for Teaching in Learning in the Arts in music education. Working closely with school-based music specialists and classroom teachers, the program targets the stated benchmarks in music literacy by enhancing students’ abilities to respond to music, listen critically, and understand and use music vocabulary. It also addresses benchmarks in making connections between music and culture by exploring the social and cultural contexts of music and asking students’ to apply musical concepts. Finally, the program meets benchmarks related to community resources by providing collaborations with teaching artists and the presentation of diverse musical performances.

Chamber Music Beginnings uses as its focus high-quality, live performances of important instrumental and vocal repertoire that illustrate basic music concepts such as harmony, form, pitch, rhythm, and melody, as well demonstration of a wide variety of musical instruments. The content of performances is closely allied to lesson plans executed in a series of visits made by professional teaching artists to participating schools. The curriculum is organized into four coordinated teaching units, each tied to the students’ next upcoming concert. All units are designed for fluency at any level of music education. Vocabulary definitions, examples, and activities compare musical concepts to real-world examples students from all walks of life can instantly embrace. All curriculum units comprise a three-step process:

  1. First, teachers review with their students a packet of materials prepared by CMS, which includes a set of creative classroom activities, a CD of the music to be played by CMS performers in concert, and child-friendly composers’ biographies.
  2. Next, this material is expanded upon and reinforced during arranged classroom visits by trained CMS teaching artists, during which students again hear and discuss the compositions and concepts to be explored in that unit’s concert presentation.
  3. Finally, students and teachers travel to a professional venue to see the ideas of the past weeks given form in a live interactive concert.

The Chamber Music Beginnings program strives to achieve the following goals:

  • Expose children in grades three through six to chamber music performances of the highest quality;
  • Enhance students’ creativity and critical thinking through hands-on music activities;
  • Build familiarity and awareness of classical music (specifically chamber music repertoire), master composers, and the historical context of the compositions;
  • Build musical vocabulary and foster an understanding of the aesthetics of sound;
  • Expose students to culturally diverse, positive artists as role models;
  • Involve classroom teachers in the learning process.