Switzerland Primary School Syllabus - Music (Zurich)

This information is based on the Zurich Lehrplan 21 for Music, issued by the Canton of Zurich Education Department on March 13, 2017.

Overall Goals and Objectives:

The Music curriculum aims to provide a comprehensive musical education, fostering creativity, performance skills, and aesthetic appreciation. It emphasizes active engagement with music through vocal, auditory, physical, instrumental, and aesthetic experiences, combined with applied musical knowledge.

Primary 3 Music Curriculum (3. Klasse):

The curriculum is structured into six competency areas:

• Singing and Speaking:
• Voice in Ensemble (MU.1.A): Students can sing in a group, matching pitches and blending their voices within the choir. They can follow instructions regarding timing and dynamics. They can practice songs in class, demonstrating focus and exploring different interpretations. They can maintain their part in two-part songs and contribute specifically to multi-part choral singing (e.g., rhythm, solo, movement).
• Voice as an Expressive Tool (MU.1.B): Students can explore and vary their singing voice. They can experiment with breathing techniques while singing and explore given tonal ranges (e.g., pentatonic scale). They can memorize and sing short melodic phrases and use varied articulation. They can also use their voice for different forms of expression and vocal experimentation (e.g., beatboxing). They can play with onomatopoeia and rhythmic speech.
• Song Repertoire (MU.1.C): Students can engage with and sing along to songs expressing various moods. They can sing children's songs and singing games from their everyday life. They can sing songs in dialect, standard language, and from different cultures. They can also sing canons and folk songs, developing a diverse repertoire.
• Listening and Orienting:
• Acoustic Orientation (MU.2.A): Students can focus their attention on acoustic sound sources and differentiate between noise, tone, and polyphony. They can follow and describe musical progressions (e.g., melody, dynamics) and differentiate and recognize musical forms (e.g., rondo, song form).
• Encountering Music in History and Present (MU.2.B): Students can engage with various musical offerings, listen to, and differentiate between songs and music from their environment. They can recognize familiar musical elements in new pieces and categorize music into different styles.
• Meaning and Function of Music (MU.2.C): Students can connect musical events with their social context (e.g., circus, carnival, contemplation, concert). They can perceive and express the moods evoked by music and grasp narratives depicted through music.
• Moving and Dancing:
• Sensorimotor Training (MU.3.A): Students can locate and name body parts, using their bodies consciously in music and dance. They can use their senses in various ways for movement to music (e.g., directional walking towards a sound source). They can playfully represent music with movement in space and orient themselves within a group.
• Physical Expression to Music (MU.3.B): Students can use their bodies as a means of expression, combining movement with materials and objects to music. They can explore body movements musically and use them creatively. They can find and develop suitable movements for a song or piece of music.
• Movement Adaptation to Music and Dance Repertoire (MU.3.C): Students can maintain circular formations in circle dances and perform movement songs. They can coordinate and repeat movement patterns to music using feet and hands (e.g., pulse, downbeat, rhythm, gait, gestures). They can perform a two-part dance following a template and vary individual elements.
• Making Music:
• Making Music in Ensemble (MU.4.A): Students can adapt to the musical play of the group (e.g., tempo, rhythm, dynamics). They can play a given structural progression on an instrument or reproduce it with their body. They can play an accompaniment and integrate themselves into the music-making group.
• Instrument as a Means of Expression (MU.4.B): Students can explore and play materials in a musically differentiated way (e.g., everyday objects, toys, natural materials). They can play and invent graphic notation and create musical moods and stories with instruments.
• Instrument Knowledge (MU.4.C): Students can repurpose simple materials into instruments. They can name a selection of school instruments and play them carefully. They can differentiate and describe selected instruments.
• Design Processes:
• Exploring and Representing Themes Musically (MU.5.A): Students can explore and play with outdoor and indoor spaces musically. They can develop a sound story based on themes from their imagination and everyday life.
• Designing to Existing Music (MU.5.B): Students can fantasize about music, develop ideas, and express them in other forms (e.g., painting, building, moving). They can put themselves in situations and roles to music and act them out.
• Musical Performance Competence (MU.5.C): Students can present their own musical ideas to the group. They can sing, dance, and make music in front of others, either individually or in a group.
• Practice of Musical Knowledge:
• Rhythm, Melody, Harmony (MU.6.A): Students can differentiate between short/long, fast/slow, and heavy/light in gradations. They can rhythmically structure movements (e.g., clapping, patting). They can adapt rhythmic syllables and words to a given tempo.
• Notation (MU.6.B): Students can translate symbols (e.g., signs, gestures, patterns) into sound and record what they hear graphically. They can recognize rhythmic motifs and melodic movements in musical notation. They can assign meaning to note values and read rhythmic motifs consisting of half, quarter, and eighth notes.

This detailed breakdown provides a comprehensive overview of the Music curriculum for Primary 3 in Zurich, according to the Lehrplan 21.