Teaching Goals

• With a kindergarten class, Barrett Jackson asks the children to listen and follow directions as they demonstrate basic care and knowledge of their instruments. Children build self-esteem by successfully completing familiar tasks, such as increasing or decreasing the tension on their violin bows or playing simple note sequences. They also learn the introductory skills they will need for participating in standardized tests.
• With a fifth-grade class, she works on a basic knowledge of music, including note reading, the musical alphabet, and the lines and spaces on a music chart. As a tie-in to the school's literacy priority, the fifth-graders construct a list of words that can be formed from the seven letters of the musical alphabet (a, b, c, d, e, f, g). They insert the words, expressed by musical notes instead of letters, in original stories. The stories are given to second-graders, who learn the notes as they translate them back into words.