12th Street Rag

As I have said before, I LOVE GamePlan.  While I don't use it exclusively to teach my kids, I do enjoy many of the lessons and games.  One I have used this year was from the 3rd Grade Book.  The lesson is playing rhythms along to 12th Street Rag (Rhythmically Moving 5).  My kids have always loved this and it was a great way to reinforce rhythm patterns, especially the whole rest.

This year when I taught the lesson, I added my own twist.

Lesson:

• Review known notes and rests using people rhythms. 
• Look at the form (Randy and Jeff have a nice visual for this in their curriculum.)
• Review Intro, Interlude, Coda
• Have a student perform the A section rhythm pattern.
• Class echoes
• Repeat with B, C, and D.
• Perform along with recording of 12th Street Rag (clap patterns)                                              (After performing the first time through, I add my twist.)
• Divide students up into 4 groups.
• Assign each group a section of the piece.
• Groups have 5-7 minutes to create a movement that can be performed using the rhythm from their section.
• Have each group demonstrate movement.
• Play music, each group performs during their section.

I have found that this twist on the lesson really helps the kids with playing the rhythms accurately.  They can create and discuss among themselves what works and why.  I find these more independent moments are when the light bulbs go off.  I wish I had video of the lesson in action!  It's interesting to see how the kids discuss and play with the idea of how to interpret a whole note with movement.  I hear them saying things like "What if we bounced our hand four times like this!"  "No, that's more like quarter notes."

Another addition I have made to this lesson is playing instruments.  I didn't include them this time but rhythm sticks are nice.  I like this instrument choice because it isn't a heavy sound, so you can still actually hear the recording and playing whole and half notes are accessible.  When students have one smooth and one bumpy stick, they can scrape the sound of the half/whole notes.  This gives them a feeling of how long the notes last.

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear

Happy New Year!  Two weeks off, holiday celebrations, and time with family really helps rejuvenate the soul.  I had an amazing start to my winter break.  At around 11:40pm, Friday Dec. 21st, the last day of school in my district, my beautiful niece was born!  We are so in love with her and are excited about being "Tia y Tio" (Aunt and Uncle) for the first time.  I hope you all had a restful winter break and are refreshed and ready to make more wonderful music with your little ones.

No matter how I prepare before a long break I always come back in a fog.  It takes me half the day before I feel like I'm back in the swing of things.  In my fog, I almost forgot to pull out my Teddy Bear masks!  The song alone is fun but teddy bear masks or masks of any kind always make things better.  :) The mask idea came from a lesson that Sandy and Gretchen shared during my Level I.

Process:
1. SM warm-up
2.  Isolate Teddy Bear
3.  Add body percussion - we ususally settle on clap-clap pat, clap-clap pat
4.  S. sing Teddy Bear w/ Body Percussion, T. sings teddy movements and demonstrates
5.  Discuss what Teddy does
6.  S. sing Teddy w/ Body Percussion and perform Teddy movements, T. sings teddy movements
7.  Discuss order of Teddy movements and lead students to discover rhyming words.
8.  S. sing and perform whole song with body percussion and movement
9.  Divide group in two and perform:  half get masks, half get unpitched percussion
10.  Switch

This lesson leads to others where we decode the melody and rhythm of the teddy bear phrase, I'll try and remember to post about them later.

In case you aren't familiar with this song, I found the notation on Beth's Music Notes.  If you haven't checked our her blog, you should.  Click here to visit her site!

These masks were a bit time consuming because I made 10 but they are very durable and so cute!  We are lucky enough to have a cut out machine at our school that I was able to use for the shape of the head.  If you don't have one of these machines, I would suggest making a template out of cardboard first.  You could find an image and trace it onto the poster/cardboard using a projector or draw it free hand.

Once I had the heads, I filled in the gaps using some colored construction paper and cut out little eye wholes.  I found sunglasses in the dollar section at Target but I imagine the dollar store would be another good place to look for them. I used hot glue to attach them to the back.  I had mine laminated at Office Max because they have really nice heavy duty lamination.  I like to use them for all my lamination and color printing needs.  They can be a bit pricey but they have teacher discounts, the staff is usually knowledgeable and the quality of the printing and lamination seems to be a bit better than the other office supply stores.

Jingle Bell Dance

The other morning I had to suddenly change my plans for Kindergarten because I had forgotten that the class I was going to see that day were my Spotlight Performers (a monthly featured class).  I could have taught my planned lesson but it would not have been great for film, so I decided to swap it with the lesson for the next rotation, Jingle Bells.

After settling on doing Jingle Bells with them, I decided why don't we do a dance!  Great for steady beat, and same/different.  So, I quickly came up with a dance to go with the version of Jingle Bells I had (Frank Sinatra).  Using this video as inspiration, I created a little dance for us to do.

Since I was planning on doing this with Kindergarten, I made some changes.  We really have not done any dances before, I thought a circle would be a bit much.  Can you imagine it?  I could see kindergarteners crashing into each other while others called out "No go that way" "Nu-uh that way".  :)  So, instead we used scattered formation.  

The Frank Sinatra recording is a bit different than the one in Dr. Amchin's video, so here is what I did with my little ones.

Formation:  Scattered

Introduction - Still for 8 beats

32 beats - sway hips from side to side (This one gives me the giggles.  If you try it you'll see what I mean!)

Jingle Bells - same as in the video, play the rhythm of the words, then walk hand in hand with your partner to the beat in any direction, repeat 

32 beats - sway hips again

Wave Goodbye

I am sure this is probably not the most fantastic dance out there but the kids enjoyed it, great practice of steady beat and it didn't take long to teach.  We were able to learn the dance and do half of the lesson I had originally planned.  

If I had more time to work on it, I probably would go ahead and do the circle.  I think my K kids could handle it with more time but this was one of those last minute things.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

I love the holiday season!  For me it starts with Halloween and runs through New Years.  I just love everything about this season; the food, family, music, lights, etc.  Today I started my series of holiday lessons with my students and it really made going back to work a bit easier.  The kids eyes sparkle every time they hear music from the Nutcracker and it is just precious to watch.

This year I am trying out Artie's Parachutes and Ribbons and Scarves, Oh My!; there are some wonderful Nutcracker lesson ideas and I am loving them already.  Now, I was a bit of a slacker over Thanksgiving break, I was supposed to go out and buy 3 sets of plastic plates to use in a lesson for March from the Nutcracker but do you think I got it done?

Well, I remembered this morning about 20 minutes before my kids arrived for our lesson, so I had to improvise.  Here's what we did:

1.  First listen:  enjoy, think about where you have heard it before.
2.  Discuss the piece where it comes from and composer.
3.  Second listen:    listen to a section at a time and decode the form.  (This turned into a great
     discussion of the music and differences between sections.)
4.  Talk about Rondo Form
5.  Learn movement for A - I gave them movement for this.
6.  Create movement for B and C.
7.  Move with the music.

While I could have used one of the other lessons Artie created, I liked doing this because it turned out to be a great foundation.  I feel like from here we can move on and try out some of  the other fun activities from the book.  It was a happy accident.

Something else I'm trying out is focusing on a holiday per grade level.  I'm starting this year out by trying it with 1st grade.  We will be focusing on the music and traditions of Hanukah.  I have found that it can be frustrating to try and fit every holiday in, especially on my extended rotation, so I'm hoping this will be more impactful than jumping from holiday to holiday.  My plan is to continue with this by selecting a holiday per grade level with music that supports our goals during that time of the year.  I'm just trying out my lessons this week, I'll let you know how it goes.

Hope you like the holiday design!  My home is semi-decorated, so I thought my blog should have some holiday cheer too!  :)

2nd Grade: Ballet

This is the best thing I've ever done!  This rotation I began my introduction to the ballet to prepare my 2nd graders for their trip to the ballet later this month.  In the past I have introduced it by reading the fairy tale and then going through a slideshow of what ballet is and trying out the feet/arm positions.  While there was nothing wrong with this lesson, what I did this rotation seemed to get such better results.

I had seen a post on Warren Ainley's blog about introducing ballet through a pantomime activity about a little fish and a shark but it didn't really fit with the woodwind instrument we were discussing this rotation.  So, instead of scrapping the idea I used Peer Gynt:  In the Hall of the Mountain King.  Our instrument was the bassoon, so it worked very well for telling the story.  I kept the story telling simple and actually told it as the music was playing.  During the 2nd listen, we pantomimed the chase, making sure to use our facial expressions to share what Peer Gynt must have been feeling.

After we finished pantomiming, we sat back down and I told them in a few weeks we would be going on a music field trip and that the performers would be pantomiming to tell a story, just like they had.

WOW!  Not one "eew" out of a single boy when I said the word ballet!!!  And even fewer than normal when I said that both boys and girls can perform in the ballet????  It was both refreshing and astonishing.  I will never teach my ballet unit again without doing a pantomime exercise first.

The Moldau

Each year my 3rd, 4th and 5th graders get to attend the Young People's Concert performed by our local orchestra.  This is such a great opportunity for students to experience live music.  To prepare for this year's performance, I have been doing a lesson on The Moldau by Smetana.

After discussing the composer and what the piece was written about, we use a listening map while listening to the river begins (this piece is broken down into 4 sections; The River Begins, The Hunt, The Country Wedding, and The Rapids).  Then we discuss the piece and how we could use movement to represent the start of the river.

Most of my classes decide that they will need to divide into two groups so that they can represent the two streams that come together to form the river but this particular 3rd grade classes interpretation was very cool.

They decided instead of having 2 meandering streams, that they wanted to focus their movements to match the increasing dynamic levels that they thought represented the growing streams.  So, they opted to start in a seated position and use their upper bodies to represent the moving water.

As the dynamic changed (got louder), they used their bodies to show the change.

When the cellos enter to signify the merging streams and the start of the river they moved forward and together to create a river flowing around the room.