Rationale
This rationale complements and extends the rationale for The Arts learning area.Music is uniquely an aural art form. The essential nature of music is abstract. Music encompasses existing sounds that are selected and shaped, new sounds created by composers and performers, and the placement of sounds in time and space.
Aims
In addition to the overarching aims of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts, music knowledge, understanding and skills ensure that, individually and collaboratively, students develop:the confidence to be creative, innovative, thoughtful, skilful and informed musicians
Structure
Learning in MusicStudents learning Music listen, perform and compose. They learn about the elements of music comprising rhythm, pitch, dynamics and expression, form and structure, timbre and texture.
Example of knowledge and skills
Foundation to Year 2
Foundation to Year 2 Band Description
In Foundation to Year 2, learning in The Arts builds on the Early Years Learning Framework. Students are engaged through purposeful and creative play in structured activities, fostering a strong sense of wellbeing and developing their connection with and contribution to the world.
In the Foundation Year, students undertake The Arts appropriate for their level of development.
They explore the arts and learn how artworks can represent the world and that they can make artworks to represent their ideas about the world. They share their artworks with peers and experience being an audience to respond to others’ art making.
As they experience the arts, students draw on artworks from a range of cultures, times and locations. They explore the arts of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and of the Asia region and learn that they are used for different purposes. While the arts in the local community should be the initial focus for learning, students are also aware of and interested in the arts from more distant locations and the curriculum provides opportunities to build on this curiosity.
As they make and respond to artworks, students explore meaning and interpretation, forms and processes, and social and cultural contexts of the arts. They make early evaluations of artworks expressing what they like and why.
Students learn about safe practices in the arts through making and responding safely in the different arts subjects.
They experience the role of artist and they respond to feedback in their art making. As an audience, they learn to focus their attention on artworks presented and to respond to artworks appropriately. In Foundation to Year 2, students learn to be an audience for different arts experiences within the classroom.
In Music, students:
- become aware of rhythm, pitch, dynamics and expression, form and structure, timbre and texture
- explore sounds as they learn to listen to and make music
- learn to discriminate between sounds and silence, and loud and soft sounds
- learn to move and perform with beat and tempo
- learn to listen as performers and as audience.
Foundation to Year 2 Content Descriptions
Foundation to Year 2 Achievement Standards
By the end of Year 2, students describe artworks they make and those to which they respond. They consider where and why people make artworks.
Students use the elements and processes of arts subjects to make and share artworks that represent ideas.
By the end of Year 2, students communicate about the music they listen to, make and perform and where and why people make music.
Students improvise, compose, arrange and perform music. They demonstrate aural skills by staying in tune and keeping in time when they sing and play.