The music program at the Alice E Grady Elementary School includes a comprehensive curriculum of general, choral and instrumental education. The instrumental music program offers each student one forty-minute lesson, once a week. These lessons are broken up into homogeneous groups with students grouped together based on level of ability and the instrument being studied. Extra lessons/ makeup lessons are offered at recess.
The performing instrumental music groups at the Alice E Grady Elementary School include the Grady Concert Band and the Beginner Band. The Beginner Band includes predominately 4th-grade students in their first year of learning an instrument. Students in this group begin to meet halfway through the school year and focus on the basics of playing instrumental music together in a group. Material primarily comes from the student's lesson book Accent on Achievement.
The Grady Concert Band is the preeminent instrumental group at Grady. This band is comprised primarily of 5th and 6th graders (and occasionally advanced 4th graders) who have been playing their instruments for over one year. These students qualify to perform at the numerous events that occur during the school year. These include Awards Assemblies, Fall and Spring Concerts, the Elmsford Memorial Day Parade, All County auditions/ festival, NYSSMA solo festival, and the Village of Elmsford’s annual tree lighting ceremony. These include fifth and sixth-grade students.
The recorder program begins in third grade. Students meet once a week for 40 minutes. These classes focus on the fundamentals of music reading, decoding symbols, and motor coordination. Simple folk songs are studied throughout the school year with an emphasis on expanding the range of the song and level of difficulty. Music learning is reflected upon during our Recorder Concert at the end of the school year. Students are then given an opportunity to select an instrument for fourth-grade instrumental instruction.
