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Music Visions

Music Visions is a gifted and talented program for grades 3-5 in District Six elementary schools.

If you would like for your child to be in Music Visions, please read the information below, and note the nomination window October 18-November 5 when you can pick up a nomination form and nominate your child in the front office of the school.  A google form will also be posted on this website October 18.  Students will be screened January-March of 2022 and must qualify in order to participate in Visions in 2022-23.

Spartanburg School District Six provides an artistically and musically gifted and talented program, entitled Visions. The following is a list of qualities artistically and musically gifted children often display. Definition:  The gifted are those children whose abilities, talents, and potential for accomplishment are so outstanding that they require special provisions to meet their educational needs.  District Six provides instruction for students identified as gifted and talented in music, in keeping with South Carolina State Regulation 43-220.

 

Students gifted in music usually share one or more of these traits:

  • High quality of work and task commitment to one of the arts such as music
  • Arts involvement and interest either in class or on their own
  • Willingness to explore arts’ problems
  • Flexible thinking; uses many approaches to solving a problem
  • Creative potential
  • Goes beyond the obvious, sees unusual relationships
  • Thinks of doing projects in their spare time
  • Examines and observes things very thoroughly
  • Likes to elaborate on an idea and add details
  • Takes work seriously and completes it
  • High energy level
  • Self-direction
 

Spartanburg School District Six will accept nominations for the Visions Artistically and Musically Gifted and Talented Program during October 28-November 8.  Music Visions –Grades 2-4.

Once a nomination form is completed and returned, students participate in a screening process in January using a test based on the music rubrics outlined in the South Carolina Identification of Artistically Gifted and Talented Students: Referral, Screening and Assessment.  Please click on the state department link for detailed rubrics and screening process details: https://ed.sc.gov/scdoe/assets/File/instruction/standards/Advanced%20Programs/2018_GT_BPM_Identification_Revised_January_2019.pdf

Students who qualify for Music Visions begin classes in the fall of the following school year, for thirty-five minutes twice a week.  Classes focus on music literacy, history, composition, and independent study.

Music literacy is showcased in Music Visions students' ability to read music on the treble staff and play soprano recorders. They join fourth graders on a field trip to hear the Spartanburg Philharmonic Orchestra perform The Carnegie Hall Link Up Concert.  They accompany the orchestra by playing their recorders and singing.  Students reflect on the performance by writing thank you notes to sponsoring area businesses, The Spartanburg Music Foundation, and the orchestra.

In preparation for the Link Up Concert, students also learn about classical music and music history.  Students study about the composers they will hear at the concert, and many learn to play the melodies of famous compositions on their recorders, or sing melodies based on orchestral works.

Students also focus on composition.  After learning to read and play recorder melodies, students can improvise, or make up their own melodies, on their recorders.  Following these exercises, students can begin to write melodies on staff paper, and learn the process of composing.

Each school year a different world culture is celebrated in Music Visions.  Past world themes have included Arts Fiesta, (Hispanic Music); African Tribal Arts, (African-American and West African Music); Arts Americana (American Folk, Rock Music); Oceanic Arts (Island Music); and Native American Tribal Arts (Native American Indian Music).  After studying the different tribes, regions or countries of a particular culture, students focus on one particular region, and complete an independent study.  Some students choose to write a song, others present iMovies, Adobe Spark or Google presentations, or PowerPoints.  The world culture study culminates at the end of the school year, when Art and Music Visions students in grades three-five can participate in the Summer Arts Institute at Dawkins Middle School.  Students can attend classes in visual are, storytelling, creative movement and music, all in keeping with the selected world culture.