The Centre of the Music Butterfly
The words Making Music appear at the centre of the music butterfly to emphasize the following ideas:

• The overarching goal of the music curriculum is to support, nurture, and inspire the growth of every student as a music maker.
• Every student is a music maker, one whose growth and learning are best realized within rich, meaningful, hands-on music-making experiences. In becoming young musicians, students learn to sing and play the music of a variety of places, times, and peoples, as well as to improvise, arrange, and compose music. As increasingly reflective and artistic music-makers, students gain skills, understandings, and attitudes that enrich them in many ways, enabling and inspiring them to continue making music for the rest of their lives.
• Every student is a creator and composer. Students must be given opportunities to tap into their creative capacities and express themselves through the creation and sharing of their own music. As they become capable of generating and developing ideas in the process of music creation, students learn to think with flexibility and imagination.

As increasingly capable and passionate music-makers, students begin a journey toward becoming creative, musically literate adults, the kinds of citizens who will truly enrich their own lives and the lives of their future communities.
 
The Wings Working Together
As one looks from the centre of the music butterfly to the wings, a new set of relationships emerge. Each wing represents one of the essential learning areas into which the general and specific music learning outcomes are organized. While the body of the butterfly evokes a holistic view of the student as a young music maker, the wings articulate a range of learning outcomes that collectively support a path to comprehensive, balanced, and developmentally appropriate learning in music.

The essential learning areas are

• Music Language and Performance Skills
• Creative Expression in Music
• Understanding Music in Context
• Valuing Musical Experience

Although each essential learning area presents a distinct set of learning outcomes, their achievement is not intended to be realized in isolation. Just as real wings work synchronously with each other, the essential learning areas are intended to function in an integrated way. Rich thematic music-making experiences will invariably integrate learning outcomes from two, three, or all four essential learning areas.

The Wings Individually
The organization of learning outcomes into distinct, interrelated learning areas, or wings, is intended to give a clear outline of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes students are expected to demonstrate at various grades. Each of the four essential learning areas contains the following components:

• Essential learning area: A statement summarizes the overall learning intent of the area or wing.
• General learning outcomes (GLOs): The GLOs are broad statements that identify the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that students are expected to demonstrate with increasing competence and confidence from Kindergarten to Grade 8.
• Specific learning outcomes (SLOs): The SLOs detail learning expectations for students at either a specific grade or a range of grades.

Connections to Key Concepts charts are provided for some SLOs. These connections offer background in the form of developmentally appropriate content related to the SLOs, and may be specific to different types of music programs such as General Music Focus, Choral, Band, or Guitar.