The Ontario Arts Curriculum is broken down into 4 "strands": Dance, Drama, Music and Visual Arts. However, in most Ontario schools, it's unlikely one teacher is covering all four strands, especially in grade 7 & 8. If you're familiar with the science curriculum, these strands are similar to the 5 strands (STEM; Life Systems; Matter & Energy; Structures & Mechanics; Earth and Space Systems). Each grade, students do units in these strands (except for the STEM one, which is supposed to be incorporated into the others). Imagine if students had a different teacher for each of those science strands? That's what usually happens with the Arts. Often, Dance and Drama are paired up, or Music and Dance, or just whatever the classroom teacher doesn't want to do is thrown over to the "coverage" or "prep" teacher.
So in the eyes of the Ontario Arts Curriculum, music is just one strand, one unit. Some schools do treat it that way--giving students music for only a third of the year. Other schools keep music all year and dance and drama are given less time. It's so widely different, from school to school and even within one board! I wrote about this in my post on making Long Range Plans.
The interesting thing is that each Arts strand has only 3 Overall Expectations. Overall Expectations are what get reported on the report card. My board's report card program comes with a comment bank, and they're based solely on these expectations (it's kind of crazy--we don't even have enough room in the comment box to use the supplied comments, we have to modify them to make them shorter). They are very similar from strand to strand, and almost identical year to year:
The next section of the curriculum is the Specific Expectations for each of the Overall Expectations. Here's where it gets scary for new teachers. This is a prompt for the Grade 3 Creating & Performing OE:
C1.1 sing, in tune, unison songs, partner songs, and rounds, and/or play accompaniments from a wide variety of cultures, styles, and historical periods (e.g., sing or play an instrument accompanied by body percussion or found sounds; sing or play a rhythmic or melodic ostinato). Teacher prompts: “Which pitched or nonpitched percussion instrument could you use to accompany this song?” “This song is a round. At what point would the second group begin?”
And this is for Grade 7 Creating & Performing OE:
C1.1 sing and/or play, in tune, from musical notation, unison music and music in two or more parts from diverse cultures, styles, and historical periods (e.g., perform selections from a method book, student compositions, instrumental scores, ensemble repertoire, African drum rhythms, choral repertoire, jazz charts, spirituals, steel band music) Teacher prompt: “How long are the phrases in this example? What will you need to do to bring out the phrasing?”
They look very similar, don't they? The assumption made in the curriculum doc is that grade 7s will be learning band instruments--but there is room for options.
Where as in science, a Specific Expectation might be one lesson from the strand ("C1.2 assess harmful effects of forces that may result from various human activities, and describe how health and safety devices can minimize these effects"), in music, it's unlikely to be one lesson--and will require thorough understanding of the music theory of the years leading up.
On one hand, music teachers have a significant amount of freedom for how they cover what they need to cover. On the other hand, this can make it very overwhelming! If you're not experienced in music, you can't just read through the pages in the science text and teach the students a concept that pretty much stands alone in that strand. Music teachers need to know a considerable amount of theory, history, context, etc in order to implement the Specific Expectations that are in the curriculum.
Imagine never having sung, and now having to ensure students are singing, in tune, rounds with accompaniment? Much different than quickly Googling health and safety devices for whatever force is being looked at!
So, after all that, if you need to ditch the Specific Expectations for music, you can! Yes, you can!
If you have other ways to cover the OE, and assess them, you can totally do that! Read through the SE and see if any inspire you, and start with those to build your units. Or build units based on the Fundamental Concepts (the six elements). Or build units based on the OE.
One colleague likes to take the Creative Process (it's in the front half of the curriculum doc) and use the 10 steps as individual lessons that combine to make one project for each OE. That works out to about 30 weeks, at one lesson per week. She doesn't look at the SE at all.
Another colleague does primarily performing in classes. They'll learn a song (recorder, glockenspiels, Boomwhackers, instruments) and learn rhythms from it, the history and/or socio-economic importance, build an accompaniment, etc. Songs often reflect the heritage month or the holiday theme.
Other colleagues do more pencil and paper work because they are on carts and can't take a lot of resources to classes. There's more listening and watching of videos.
There's no one right way to cover the OE. The province has contributed to this by not insisting on specialized teachers for the Arts and it's nice that they gave us this flexibility in the curriculum. The hardest part is the Fundamental Concepts. You might be the latest in a string of music teachers and have no idea what students know. You might be there only 1 year too. You might have no idea of music theory. It's okay! There's lots of resources out there (such as in my TPT store!) to help fill in your gaps.
If you take this opportunity to be a learner, as well as a teacher, you might find you really enjoy doing music coverage. It tends to be a more relaxed time with students! Your report card writing needs are not too intense. The downside is you might have to learn a lot of names (I had 160-175 students and I was at a small school!). The upside, you get to know so many students!
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