Mary of Lourdes Catholic School
Little Falls, MN
Preschool - 8th Grade
Music & Band
Mrs. Amanda Quinn
aquinn@molschool.org
Grades 5-8 Band, Jazz Band, Band Lessons, MOLMS Church Choir,
Grades 6-8 Choir, 5th Gr. Music
Amanda Quinn graduated from College of Saint Benedict in 2013 with a B.A. in Music. She has taught preschool through high school. Through her previous teaching positions she has been trained in mindfulness and Montessori (ages 3-6). Mrs. Quinn has been very involved in musical theatre as an actor, vocal director, and director. She is also the founder, director, and singer of the a cappella group Vocal Envy. Mrs. Quinn began teaching at MOLMS in 2022.
Curriculum
MUSIC
The music curriculum at Mary of Lourdes seeks to build on foundational skills which continue to be practiced (though at a higher level each year) throughout the entire course of the program. It is a very active approach that aims at learning through doing. While topics like music theory and history are studied (especially in middle school) they are explored through the music that students are making themselves.
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The first couple years of general music focuses on basic aural and movement skills. These include matching pitch, keeping a steady beat, melodic memory and repetition, and spatial awareness. Students continue to practice these skills at increasing levels of difficulty and complexity each year.
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From second grade on, students also begin music literacy, and folk dance. Our literacy program focuses on training the ear and the eye simultaneously, so that students can both sound out what they see, and also write what they hear. The traditional style group dances we learn help to build the students’ sense of steady beat, and teach them to hear musical phrasing.
In third grade students begin to work on part singing, this starts with rounds, and partner songs, and moves on to bass lines and other more complicated forms of part singing by the time they are in 6th grade.
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BAND
Our main curriculum for grades 4-8 is Essential Elements Band method, books I,II, and III.
If and when students have mastered the skills learned in those books, they progress into the Rubank band lesson book, with the exception of percussionists, who study the Alfred's Drum Method, book II.
Instruction in grade 4 band is augmented by Standard of Excellence, book I.
Students in grades 5-8 also study "Skill Builders" and "Rhythm Busters"as a group.
Students in grades 6-8 also study "Great Warm-ups For Young Bands'', by Bruce Pearson.
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