This past week I was able to present a 50-minute webinar with a 10-minute Q and A session about MusicFirst Elementary Powered by Charanga. I have included the video and this blog post below in case you would like to know more about it.

Here are some highlights included in the video:

What is MusicFirst Elementary Powered by Charanga?

MusicFirst Elementary (MFE) is a complete K-5 curriculum with creativity tools built in. It is the perfect music education tool for young students, providing a complete K-5 curriculum with more than 1000 interactive resources that are tailored to engage and interact with them while they learn. Whether you’re an experienced music teacher or are new to the profession, MFE has everything you need to cultivate a lifelong love of music.

Being powered by Charanga means that it is a product that has been used in the UK, Australia, and other countries for years. And what amazing educators and developers like Mary Birkner, Joanna Mangona, Paul Fletcher, and Mark Burke did was they took that product and meticulously aligned it with the National Core Arts Standards of Creating, Performing, Responding, and Connecting to Music here in the States.

What you have is an engaging curriculum that promotes and encourages active participation in music-making. Students will sing, move, listen, respond, improvise, compose, and perform in every unit within every grade level.

Spiral Curriculum Design

***Image provided by MusicFirst Elementary found at*** ***https://www.musicfirstelementary.com/***

MFE is a complete curriculum that involves a spiral curriculum design. Though you could use this to supplement your current curriculum, you can also use this to map out your entire curriculum. The spiral design means that this curriculum has built-in retrieval practice so that concepts that are taught in earlier years are continuously revisited in more complex ways throughout each subsequent grade level. This allows musical elements and music theory-related concepts to be embedded and deepened over the course of a student’s elementary music journey.

Social Themes

MFE also features a spiral approach to address social themes. These themes promote the social and emotional growth of children. The spiral approach allows selected social themes to be revisited in more complex ways beginning with Kindergarten and extending to Fifth Grade. This shows the commitment to developing students’ social and emotional well-being in addition to fostering musical growth. You can also display these themes in your classroom to intuitively address them as you teach.

Assessments, Lesson Plans, and More!

Each grade level contains six units and each unit contains six lessons with a song and activities. The activities include singing, moving to music, performing on instruments, creating music, improvising, listening, responding to the music through higher-order thinking questions, music history, social themes, and more. There is a summative assessment included at the beginning and end of each unit. There are also numerous formative assessments included where you can use checklists to assess, download printables, and so much more.

Instrument Parts!

MFE includes elementary classroom instrument play-along videos and parts for pitched and non-pitched instruments. It also contains lead sheets for C, Eb, Bb, and F instruments in various clefs so that your older elementary students who are learning their instrument in band or orchestra lessons can perform in your general music classes. In addition, there are many songs that are scored for band, orchestra, keyboards, ukuleles, guitars, percussion, strings, brass, and woodwinds so that you do not have to recreate the wheel (like I usually do for my wonderful, eclectic ensemble) or purchase music for elementary ensembles.

Creative Tools

MFE includes creative tools like Rhythm Grids for composition and decoding, Music NotePad as an elementary composition tool for melodies, and YuStudio, a web-based music creation digital audio workstation (DAW) that includes scoring videos!

Want to learn more?

Watch the webinar below!

Frequently Asked Questions?

Are there features coming in the future?

Yes. MusicFirst Elementary will develop its product as it grows here in the States. Some developments that will be coming are:

Orff elements
Kodály elements
Greater selection of authentic world music and folk songs from a variety of regions
Ukulele courses
Recorder courses
State standards
Song List
Search tool
Working offline

Can you add your own materials?

Yes! MFE is flexible. This picture below comes from my own account where I am creating the September Kindergarten Unit. I have added my own Google slides with the “Musicians’ Birthdays for Each Lesson”. These slides include a couple of fun facts about musicians who have birthdays in the month of September, along with a few live performance excerpts of their music.
You can also upload videos, manipulatives, PowerPoints, pictures, docs, pdf, audio files, links to your favorite YouTube channels, and more.

What does MFE offer that makes it unique?

Currently, I am excited about the following items that I feel make MFE unique:

The scope and sequence so that you could use a portion or you could use this as a sole curriculum.
The Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) aspects of the curriculum include the songs, the history, the styles of the music, and more.
The Social Themes are woven into the curriculum and included in each lesson.
The songs, the instrument parts, and the play-along videos.
The concepts of composition and improvisation are built into every grade level.
The intuitive cross-curricular connections.
YuStudio, and all of the creative tools.
The older elementary curriculum is age appropriate.
The layout includes very little clicking.
The assessments included are summative and formative and can be downloaded and used when needed.

Is the curriculum only meant for a 1:1 classroom?

No. This curriculum could be used in a one-device classroom, only by the teacher, a teacher on a cart, a classroom with multiple devices, or a 1:1 classroom. Basically, it is flexible and can be used in a variety of teaching scenarios. It works on any internet-enabled device.

What is the price?

The price is $695/year with unlimited users per school building - teachers and students.

What if I am a current MusicFirst Junior subscriber?

Speak to your MusicFirst Education Manager - we have a very special program for you.

Does MusicFirst Elementary work with things like Google Classroom & Clever?

On launch, we will have integration with EdLink and ClassLink. We will be building other integrations over time.

How can I get a FREE trial of MusicFirst Elementary?

Just fill out this form and you’ll receive credentials automatically.

Try it out today!

Have You Checked Out MusicFirst Elementary Powered by Charanga?