Teaching Musical Skills in the Co-Curricular Elementary Classroom

In co-curricular teaching, a popular technique in the modern classroom, teachers of several subjects focus learning activities on a common theme. The challenge for these teachers is to convey information from their subject area and, at the same time, information about the common theme. Since multiculturalism is increasingly emphasized in school curricula, this common theme is often a foreign culture. For an elementary music teacher, this means finding musical materials, developmentally appropriate to the students, which also explore the role of music in the chosen culture. Finding the Music Can a music teacher easily find songs and chants that contain information to help students develop musically and find information to teach students about another culture? That is the question I set out to answer by designing my research project to reflect a situation common to elementary music educators. In this scenario, an elementary classroom teacher decides to teach a co-curricular unit centered on a certain country, such as Ghana. S/he asks the music teacher to come up with music that relates to life in Ghana, so the students can better understand and appreciate the culture. Meanwhile, the music teacher wishes to teach appropriate musical skills and needs music containing certain musical elements. Can the music teacher find adequate musical material to accomplish both sets of goals