IB MYP Y7 Music

Introduction: The arts are a universal form of human expression and a unique way of knowing that engage us in affective, imaginative and productive activity. Learning through the arts helps us to explore, shape and communicate our sense of identity and understanding of the world, while providing opportunities to develop self-confidence, resilience and adaptability. The IB MYP arts value the process of creating artwork as much as the finished product. The Music curriculum in Grade 7 seeks to be challenging and to encourage students to engage in theoretical, music-making and curatorial practice by giving them the opportunity to build knowledge and understanding, develop skills, think creatively, and respond to music. 

Description: Students will begin the course by exploring music and its correlation with psychology. It will help students to build their thinking skills - in particular, they will be exploring the definition of music, Students will explore ways to accurately describe sound, investigate how different people and cultures use music, and determine how music can be visually represented. All of these are opportunities to challenge students' current thinking, forcing them to consider new perspectives and justify their thoughts. During the second unit students will be enabled express their ideas with emotion through creating authentic music compositions. They will explore non-traditional music notation for broadening their horizon to be encouraged to design and create their own unique musical compositions. This unit will enable students to utilize music sequencing software to identify different sources for sounds in a composition as well as to sample and create their own pop remix. This unit will flow into the brief history of human beat-boxing where students will be introduced to concepts through various modalities. It will create an opportunity for students to perform in front of their peers. The third unit is a continuous assessment unit spanning the entire semester. In the third unit, students will investigating and exploring the musical language which artistic citizens utilize to communicate with one another. The concepts and rules that make up music theory are very much like the grammatical rules that govern written language. 

Assessment: All Music work is assessed against the MYP assessment criteria, using the 1-8 scale. Each assessment piece is accompanied by a rubric or other assessment instrument. Assessment takes place in the form of regular formative and a summative task per unit.