Music Integration Toolkit

CS Educator Toolkit CS Family Toolkit Community Practice

Music and CS Standards

This document identifies cross-content connections in music and computer science instruction in grades K-2. Where possible, we have tried to identify opportunities for using CS to reinforce core concepts in music education, and for using music to reinforce key CS concepts.

For ease of use, these concepts have been organized into strands, aligned with PA music standards.

CS & Music Resources

Unplugged Coding

Unplugged activities are a great way to teach coding concepts like loops, conditionals and variables.  Here are two approaches we used with our campers: 

Physical Computing

Using physical computing devices, such as micro:bit, gives students a sense of how the code they write can impact things in the real world. In our camp, we were able to use it in 3 different ways. Click the links to jump to the activities.

Coding in a DAW

Platforms like EarSketch allow students to use languages like Python and Javascript to code music in a Digital Audio Workstation, or DAW

Other related CS & Music Resources

CS Educator Toolkit CS Family Toolkit Community Practice

 

Pennsylvania K-12 Computer Science Engagement 

These sortable databases contain all computer science courses reported in PIMS for the previous academic years. LEAs are highly encouraged but not required to report CS course-taking data. Data Dashboard is soon to be released! 

 

Analysis Tools

The tools listed below are to support with anaylzing the data.

This worksheet is designed to help educators to compare the demographics of their CS courses to the overall enrollment of their school. This worksheet makes it easy to identify equity gaps in CS courses and hopefully, leads to efforts to close such gaps.

A collection of resources that may be used to promote intentional equity.

National report about the state of computer science education and the disparities that were heightened due the COVID-19 pandemic.

Code.org data from 2020 that can be used to advocate for equitable CS education.

Statistics on K-12 students’ participation in CS in the U.S.

Research on barriers to access and equitable participation in CS education.

Not all students have the opportunity to learn CS

While Pennsylvania K-12 engagement in CS has increased over the past three years, large gaps remain; less than 24% of students across the commonwealth participated in CS learning in the 2019-20 school year. Of the approximately 339,000 Pennsylvania students engaging in computer science courses K-12, less than 23% are students of color and less than 4% are English language learners.

Call-Out

2017-2018 Academic Year

*

2019-2020 Academic Year

**

2020-2021 Academic Year

* Contains “at a glance” data for 2014 - 2017)

** First year to include K-6 CS data

The Music Integration toolkit contains information and resources for using CS to reinforce core concepts in music education, and for using music to support students in CS learning:

  • Music + CS Standards 
  • Songs created specifically for CS 
  • Resources and Strategies discussed in the video and other related resources 

CS Songs

The following CS songs are created in partnership with our friends at BrightNow! to support young learners CS learning (mainly for Pre-K to 2 grade level band : CSTA 1A standards)

  • Step by Step by Step (CSinPA Theme song)
  • That’s A Computer
  • Quick Check 
  • IP Address

Visit the song page to listen to these songs below and explore activities on each song page. We'll share more accompanying resources and activities you can use to engage learners in CS using these songs. More songs are in development!

In order to provide the best and most current resources and information, we continually revise our CSinPA Toolkits. You can contribute to the toolkit by submitting your questions, revisions, or resources using this form.