Boomwhacker Scale

I am posting this photo in my blog so that I can pin it to my Music Teaching Ideas board on Pinterest. A music teacher on the AOSA Facebook page posted it after her 4th grade students had come up with this idea themselves. Since I have boomwhackers as well as a music staff on my rug, I might just do this with my students, too!

My Many Colored Days

One can buy a pre-packaged lesson for Dr. Seuss's My Many Colored Days. I already have a supply of scarves, and I got the book from the public library, but I didn't have the CD with pre-selected music. No problem, I decided to put together my own playlist.

Here is the lesson plan. Read the book, which assigns an emotion to a color, to the class. Then put a collection of scarves in the middle of the circle and have students select one color of scarf. Read each page and have the students with that color scarf move with appropriate motions to match the mood of the book/music. At the end, choose one kind of wild piece for everyone. This is the free-for-all dance piece.

Here is my playlist:

Red - Hoedown from Copland's Rodeo

Blue - Aviary from Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals

Brown - Elephant from Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals

Yellow - Flight of the Bumblebee by Rimsky-Korsakov

Gray - First movement from Quartet for the End of Time by Messian

Orange - Circus Music from Copland's Red Pony Suite

Green - Aquarium from Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals

Purple - Gymnopodie #1 by Eric Satie

Pink - Run! Run! from Memories of Childhood by Octavio Pinto

Black - The Comedians Pantomime by Kabalevsky

All Colors - Sing Sing Sing by Benny Goodman

What might you choose for the colors?

Saint-Saens' Aquarium

Here are my first graders moving to Aquarium from the Carnival of the Animals. I hand out a scarf to every-other student (to the exclamations of "You forgot me!), but then I come around to those poor scarfless waifs and give them one finger cymbal. We have already moved to the music with the Move It! video, so the music is in their ears. The children with scarves are to move as the seaweed, and the children with a finger cymbal "swim" through the seaweed. When one fish meets another, they gently touch cymbals for a delightful sound. After one time through, they swim back to their regular spot and exchange with the person next to them so they have turns being both the seaweed and fish. This is always a favorite activity.

If I Had a Hammer

The recent death of Pete Seeger has brought this childhood hero of mine to the forefront of my thoughts lately. I decided that the kids at Vista need to sing If I Had a Hammer again, and I have pulled out my guitar and started introducing it to the kids. Of course, they immediately take to the song.

I'm surprised (but maybe not so much) that some of the teachers do not even know who Pete Seeger was. But today, in the teacher's room during lunch, I started talking about the song, and the teachers who know the song started singing it, clapping along, with great gusto. The office manager and one of the teachers just looked on, watching us. There was even mention that teachers need to sing this in the talent show in June. For sure, we are going to sing this as a whole school in the next month or so.

This reminds me of the time that I had to introduce Puff, the Magic Dragon to the students. It's probably time I dusted that one off, too.

Singing on Pitch

As we start in earnest this week on preparing for Winter Sing, I have been looking at videos online to get ideas for choreography for some of the songs we're performing. While I have seen some very cute costuming and moves, I have noticed that the quality of singing leaves something to be desired with kids not distinguishing between singing and speaking voices. (Or even shouting voices.)

I have noticed, though, that my own students are not particularly good at listening and matching pitches. They start singing along when I am presenting the song for the first time. Then we stop and I have them close their eyes and break down the song into small sections, sometimes just two or three notes so that we can match the pitch. It improves immediately.

So, I will make sure to have the students practice pitch-matching before working on any choreography.

Student Musician

A new second grader has come to Vista, and after his first music 

class, he appeared in the music room after school with his mother
and her friend in tow. I asked him if he left something in the room
(someone is always forgetting something). Nope. He just wanted
his mom to meet me.

His mom said that he loves music, picks out tunes on the piano, etc.
He said he wants to learn to play violin, and I told him that he could
take lessons in school in 4th grade. I said that we do lots of pre-music
notation activities and she said, "J said that you did a little bit of theory, 

that's great!" Wow, a parent who knows to say music theory...

#ritenpr

Now that I am on summer vacation, lesson plan ideas are springing to mind. NPR had a contest for the 100th anniversary of the first performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. They asked readers to create a one-minute video of the final minute of the piece, and then NPR made a montage of their favorites.

The montage is great, the variety of entries inspiring. I especially enjoy the children's version, but I am thinking about showing my students a sampling of the versions for inspiration so that they can create their own movement to either that minute of music, or maybe another piece (Carmina Burana?).

Last Week of General Music

This is the last week of the school year for me. The money has run out, and even though there is still another month of school for the CUSD, music is ending. I am not at all sad since at this time of year, students are not coming to music with their full brains engaged. (This is an understatement.)

I have always tried to do different and fun things in the final weeks of music class, but my attempts to involve students in music-making fail. I have finally remembered this while I lesson plan, and this week we are watching movies! Well, you know, good movies. With the upper graders we watched The Sorcerer's Apprentice section of Fantasia and I had the kids write about various sections of the 10-minute video. The second-graders watched The Dance of the Hours and laughed and laughed.

The vast majority of the kids have not seen this movie, so it was fun to be able to introduce a part of it to them. We told one of the older classes that we couldn't show them the whole movie because some parts are "inappropriate" (I showed it to my own kids when they were young, so I don't find anything objectionable in it, but maybe some parents wouldn't want me to show them the sort-of nudity or the wine-making by Bacchus.). As soon as they heard there might be racy parts, they all wanted to know the name of the movie so they could go rent it.....

Star Light, Star Bright

This week I sang "Star light, star bright" with my first graders with the traditional sol-la-mi tune. Based on a lesson I learned from Donna Massello-Chiacos at an Inland Counties Chapter of AOSA last month. Some students played a simple bordun on C and G, some students played finger cymbals when we sang "star", others played triangles when we sang "wish" and the rest played shakers on the rhyming words. 

Songs for Multicultural Day

Every year at Vista, we have a Multicultural Day where each classroom, which has been studying a country (some years we've done biomes) for a month or so, sends its students "traveling" to two other countries and also attend a fun assembly. (We've had all kinds of great assemblies.)

At the end of this morning, we have a big parade around the school where each class carries the flag they've made, and we all end up in front of the outdoor stage where we sing three songs as a whole school. This is one of my favorite times of the year. I love it when I can see our whole school together.

We have a collection of songs we rotate through. Two favorites we are singing this year include Bandera del Sol and This Pretty Planet (see previous blog post about this.) When thinking about a third song, one of the teachers suggested This Land is Your Land. While I really like this song, I wanted one with a more global reach. Then it occurred to me to change the chorus a bit. This is what I have come up with.

This world is your world, this world is our world

From France and Chile to Macedonia 

From the Cayman Islands to the Nile River

This world was made for you and me.

My Paddle Video

I know that Yahoo employees are unhappy about the new requirements of having to actually go to work, but I know that productivity and creativity increases when you actually have conversations with people. (This means actual conversations and not texting/emailing/FB'ing, etc.)

Case in point. I was sitting in the lunch room this week talking to the third grade teachers. One said that he had updated some information on his classroom webpage, and it occurred to me that I could reach some of the parents and students of his class that way. I could make little recorder videos to help students practice at home.

At first I thought I could make a demo video of me playing various pieces on the recorder, but then I thought that the students should be able to see the notes, as well. I know that there are probably sophisticated ways to animate the music as it rolls by, and I know that I couldn't do that today. Or even tomorrow.

Then I realized that in the Sibelius program, the cursor moves over the notes as they are played. I wondered if I could take a video screenshot of that, and after a little googling, I discovered that I certainly could with Quicktime. I had a little trouble getting the audio figured out, but the help in Quicktime set me straight, and after some trial and error (and about 8 aborted attempts), this is what I came up with. A first pass, for sure, but I am imagining all the possibilities!

Extending Lessons

I don't get to see my general music students very much. I get each 4th-6th grade class once every two weeks for 45 minutes (which ends up being closer to 35-40 minutes). I used to think that I should cover as much territory as possible, so I came up with a different thing to cover each lesson. I have come to realize that it is far better to learn one concept very well, attacking it from various different directions each time.

Now we are working on meter. Last session we sang Frere Jacques to various meters 2/4, 6/8, 3/4, 4/4 and then 5/4. This session we will be playing a bordun for the song in the various meters, starting with body percussion. Then we'll be moving on to lessons from Randy and Jeff's Gameplan Grade 5 which address 5/4 and mixed meter.

Throw in singing some Beatles songs (many of my students are unfamiliar with this iconic group), and I think we'll have some good times in music class for the next few months.

Round Singing

On Monday one of my second graders requested that we sing the song America (not My Country 'Tis of Thee, but the one from the Wee Sing America CD). It's very short, and I did need a few minutes of filler, so I said, sure.

After we sang it a capella, the boy who requested it wanted to know if we could sing it in a round. We had done that once before with the teacher leading one of the groups, but this time we had a sub in the room whom I know did not want to sing. So we tried it and I chose the group that had a few very strong singers in it to start and continue by themselves while I sang with the second group. They did a great job and went out of the room happy.

It warmed my heart.

Attention Spans

I have been trying to figure out why my students seem to have much shorter attention spans this year from last. At first I thought it might just be the beginning of the school year. But then it dawned on me that I now teach just before and just after lunch, which are not great times to learn anything.

So, I am going to have to figure out ways to combat this....

Playing Cello

Today the Vista Orchestra celebrated the end of a great year with a lunchtime party.  We brought our lunches to the music room, and kids brought something extra to share (cookies and chips are favorites).  The biggest hit of the party was when I pulled out two cellos that I have to see which one fit one of my students the best.  I wanted to let her borrow a cello for the summer so she can keep practicing.  

The best part of this party was that every kid in the room wanted to play the cellos and stood patiently in line for their turn.  It was pretty cute.

The End of the School Year

It's the end of the school year.  You can tell because of the concerts that pop up on the calendar.  I have discovered that student persistence wanes in May, so it's good to end on a high note.  On Wednesday we had our (3rd or 4th?) annual Vista Orchestra and Recorders Concert.  I really enjoy this one.  It lasts about 30 minutes, the MP room at Vista is standing room only, and the set-up is really easy.

This year we played 10 pieces, about 4 of them new arrangements for this year.  I am always pleased with how everything comes together, and I am always happy when it is over.

Two more concerts on the docket - the district strings concert and a recital for my private students.  Then it's summer (and time to think about composing in earnest).

Vista Orchestra

Today the Beginning Strings class at Vista joined the orchestra (students in their 2nd and 3rd years) to practice Jingle Bells for next week's Winter Sing.  I always enjoy having all the students combine, and the beginners are usually motivated to work even harder after seeing the more advanced students.

Something Told the Wild Geese

Every year at Vista's Winter Sing, the 3rd grade recorder students are anxious to play, but we only know 4 notes (or 5, if we've gotten to D).  I don't want to play the same songs every year, and sometimes I just get tired of Sleep, Baby Sleep.  Last year we played Who Has Seen the Wind, which I really like, but didn't want to repeat this year.  I particularly like the poem Something Told the Wild Geese by Rachel Field, so I thought I would just throw a little song together with those lyrics.  The simplist of songs is not all that simple to write.

Here are the first two versions that I did not satisfy me.  While riding my bike to school this morning, this final version came to me, and I managed to write it down before I forgot it.  I will try it out this afternoon with my classes to see how it works out.  I haven't tried it yet, but I hope that it can work as a round.  Because it is pentatonic-like, it should theoretically work.

First version 

Second version

Final Version

Skin and Bones

I just love teaching the Skin and Bones song for the first time to second graders.  I sing quite softly and have the class respond with the 0oooos, very creepily.  When I get to the Boo, most of them give a little jump and then laugh.  That moment is always magic.  Yesterday little Thomas said, "I didn't see That one coming!"

Grids

Every few years I love to present the grid lesson that I learned on my first day in Orff Level 1 training.  Students get to have an opportunity to 1) practice steady beat 2) practice rests 3) create their own rhythmic patterns 4) move.  Even the staid 6th graders really get into this activity.

I also like it because even when you make a "mistake" no one knows because so much is going on, and you have the chance to jump back in and keep going.