• Music is the Heartbeat of the Arts...

    Suffolk Public Schools Elementary General Music provides students an opportunity to learn and grow in self-expression, exploring various styles of music as appropriate to their grade. Students develop lifelong skills of collaboration and teamwork, creativity and imagination, critical thinking, and communication and problem-solving, necessary within the framework of 21st Century Skills.

     

    Suffolk Public Schools’ Fine and Performing Arts Curriculums for secondary music courses inherently teach the overarching concepts within its benchmarks.  Within each area, the Virginia Standards of Learning for Fine Arts addresses 21st Century Learning Skills but also:

    • Social-emotional learning 

    • Fine motor skills

    • Critical Thinking Skills

    • Behavioral interventions through creative coping mechanisms

    • Collaboration

    • Effective Communication

    • Differentiated and Modified Instruction and Communication

    • Self-Expression

    Within the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), a well-rounded education includes fine and performing arts to prepare the whole child as they matriculate through school.  Students will engage in cultural literacy in order to be a more thoughtful and contributing member of  their community.  Through the course of study, students will learn skills that further develop them for the 21st Century Workforce. Students will utilize their study of music in their perception of the world and integration in society as community members.  Students will evaluate art objectively, but also to develop personal opinions (subjectively).  Students will learn to use music and the arts for expression of emotion and creativity and how that works in any field of study, through generalized cultural literacy.

     

    Courses Include:

    • General Music 6 (nine weeks)

    • Orchestra 6

    • Orchestra 7

    • Orchestra 8

    • HS Beginning Orchestra

    • HS intermediate Orchestra

    • HS Advanced Orchestra

    • Band 6

    • Band 7

    • Band 8

    • HS Beginning Band

    • HS Intermediate Band

    • HS Advanced Band

    • Choir 6

    • Choir 7

    • Choir 8

    • HS Beginning Choir

    • HS Intermediate Choir

    • HS Advanced Choir 

    • HS Small Vocal Ensemble (advanced)

    • HS Small Instrumental Ensemble (advanced)

    • HS Chamber Instrumental Ensemble (advanced, jazz)

    • HS Guitar I

    • HS Guitar II

    • HS Music Theory

    • HS Music History and Appreciation (non-performance)