Performing Groups: Getting Started Each Year

Getting my after school performing groups started for the year can be a big task.  For the past four years I have had two after school groups; Chorus and Orff.  Like everything else, planning for these groups starts right at the beginning of the year.  It's a bit crazy but once I'm past the first month of school (recorder sales are done, chorus and orff registration are complete) I can settle into a more normal routine.

Below are some of the things I do to get my groups started:

1.  Create Interest
Post flyers, hand out reminder cards, talk it up with your kids.  I send out an email to the full staff at my school so that they have all of the details regarding my groups.  If you have a morning/afternoon news crew, create a blurb for them to include in the announcements leading up to the interest or first meeting.

I've added both of these documents to the Freebies section.

2.  Interest Meeting
I always host interest meetings for performing groups about a week before I want to have our first rehearsal.  There are a few reasons for this.
    A:  While I do promote these groups during my first rotation, I don't want to take up all of my class       time and not make any music during those lessons. Plus not everyone needs all of the details!

    B:  I want to go over our contract in person so that I can answer any and all questions about how           to make sure you get to be a part of the group.

    C:  Most importantly, I want to give the kids more information about what it means to be a part of           these groups and my expectations for them.

3.  Contracts
My kiddos have to fill out a contract in order to participate in my groups.  This contract ensures that they and their parents understand the importance of attending rehearsals and concerts.  This year I'm trying out something new.

My groups have become so large that I can no longer just accept everyone who is interested.  This year I will accept on a first come, first serve basis.  The first 50 students to sign up for chorus will be my initial group.  However, if a student does not fulfill the requirements (too many absences/tardies, behavior concerns), they will be replaced with an alternate.  I don't believe in auditioning to be in these after school groups but that is always another option if you are having trouble with large numbers.

These are just some the things I do to get my groups started.  More on Chorus/Orff later.  What are some of the things you do to get your groups going every year?

Resource: The Singing Classroom

Have you ever picked up one of your resource books, looked at a lesson and thought "What does that mean?"  It happens to me every so often and sometimes it's not convenient to call or email a colleague to find out how to do a certain dance step.  I've often wished that I had some pictorial guide or video to watch in order to better understand how to play a game or do a dance.

https://www.thesingingclassroom.com/

TheSingingClassroom.com is a great new resource available to music educators that solves these problems.  Deborah Pasternack, a Kodaly and Orff certified educator, along with her husband have created an online collection of songs and games to use in the elementary classroom.  Each song has a detailed description of the activity, materials required, the recommended grade and the skills/concepts that can be taught using the song.  In addition to all of this wonderful information, there are videos and animations of the games being played and recommendations from Deborah on how to implement the lesson in your classroom!

Check out a sample lesson here:  https://www.thesingingclassroom.com/sample.html

After browsing the site, I have discovered that even more than video instructions, what I really needed was organization.  Once you have discovered a song or game that you LOVE in the collection, you can bookmark it so that you can easily access it when you need it.  The nice thing about being able to bookmark a song is you don't have to worry about carting a bag of resource books around with you.  If I know the song is bookmarked in my account, I can access it from anywhere I have internet.

It's fun watching the videos and thinking about using the lessons with my own students.  Right now there are just over 50 games/songs in the collection but it grows every week.  I look forward to emails letting me know that there is new content available.

This resource is available for a $12.95/month subscription fee.  Now, I know that may seem like a lot but there is new content added frequently, so it's like getting a bunch of resource books all at once.  I'm pretty cheap when it comes to purchasing resources; I want something that I know I will use and won't just sit on a shelf.  For me, this is something worth the investment.  Remember, PTO is always a great option for resources like this!

I am so excited about this site and using it to supplement my curriculum this year.  I've already bookmarked a number of songs and games to use with my kids!

Freebie: Barred Instrument Labels

I find the more I label instruments the better my students get at naming them.  Each of my barred instruments has one of these labels, which not only help students with the name, but understanding the differences in timbre. You can request this file in the Freebies section of my blog.

When I printed the labels for my instruments I didn't have access to a color printer, so I printed them on colored card stock.    The labels are small enough to fit between the mallets on the bass instruments and the box of the smaller.  I placed my glockenspiel labels on the stands I use in my classroom (check them out here).  I'll make sure to get some pictures during Pre-Planning.

Brand New Beginnings

There are only 2 more days with kids and 2 days of post-planning before I am done for the year.  While I love these last few days with my students before summer vacation (I really do, despite the fact that they are bouncing off the walls!), this year I am just as excited as the kids to start the break.  I'd love to say that it's because I have an amazing trip planned to the beach to relax by the shore but it is far from that.

In January my best buddy and I, Mrs. M (the art teacher from my school), embarked on the journey of starting our own business.  I am proud to say that, after a lot of research and hard work, I am the Co-Owner of a Summer Art and Music Camp!  While I won't be lying on the beach for the first few weeks of summer, I am relishing the opportunity to make music with children and share the experience of running our own business.

Tonight I was working on some of my camp lessons and going through some supplies I have gathered from family and friends over the years and this is what I camp up with....

It's kind of hard to tell what they are from the picture, so let me explain.  I had a bunch of chopsticks that I was trying to use in some way and then it hit me.  Cup Drumming!  After unwrapping a set and trying it out on a plastic cup, I was happy with the sound but the chopsticks were splintering and a bit flimsy.  

Being the band nerd that I am, I remembered that the drum line in marching band used electrical tape to wrap their sticks.  So, I ransacked my tape drawer and found some!  Yes, between two teachers, we have a whole tape drawer in our house.  We have everything from duct to scotch to double sided and beyond.  Then I wrapped the sticks in an assortment of colors.

Here is what they look like in use:

My patient husband as a hand model.

While this is something that I am planning for camp, there are so many practical applications for the classroom.  Here are some I've thought of so far:

1.  Play-a-long to famous pieces.

The sound of the drumming is light enough that you could have a whole class playing-a-long without it covering the musical selection.  If you do your sticks multi-colored like mine, you could have different groups play-a-long to different sections in the music; A-red, B-blue, etc.

2.  Centers

These would be great for rhythmic centers.  Again the light sound wouldn't be distracting to kids working other places in the room.

3.  Improv

These would be nice for a variation on an improv activity.  I'm thinking Q and A.

How do you think you could use these in your classroom?

Fixing Barred Instruments

If you haven't seen this video, check it out, because it is a great resource.

A few weeks ago, I was working on a couple of broken pegs but I didn't have the tools listed in the video.  My wonderful husband spent about 20 minutes helping me figure out how to repair the instruments and they are good as new.  Below is what we did.  To complete this yourself you will need a small screw, a screwdriver, an adjustable wrench and some wood glue.

We started by centering a screw on the broken peg.

Then turned it a couple of times into the plastic.

Then used a wrench to pull it out.

After removing the bit of broken peg, I squeezed a bit of wood glue onto the replacement peg and pushed it into the hole.  This worked for me but please be careful when repairing your instruments.  You can purchase replacement pegs through West (click here).

Glockenspiel Stands

I have had many people ask me where I found the glockenspiel stands for my classroom.

I've tried and tried to remember what they were called but couldn't.  Well, this weekend my husband and I were working around our house and made a trip to Lowe's for a few supplies.  I happened across the stands and actually bought one for some home organization.

Great news, they have them at both my local Home Depot and Lowe's and they are priced at $5.98 each.

Mallet Technique

I'm sure you have seen your kids holding their mallets like this with their index finger on top.

I try to keep my kids from doing this by saying "Remember, no sneaky pointers!".  I establish this in K from the very first time we play barred instruments.  It's a quick easy reminder to correct mallet technique.  For some reason my kids think it's really funny and they giggle every time!

And soon enough they are holding the mallets like this!  Or, quietly reminding each other.  It always gets me when I hear one of them using my words like a little teacher.  :)

Paper Xylophone

I know you may have another name for this resource but I call it a paper xylophone.

Mine is made out of a piece of black poster board cut in half and cardstock strips.  I don't remember the original length and width of the strips but I do remember that I cut them a 1/4" shorter as I glued each one onto the poster board.  I love that my xylophone is laminated because it allows me to easily use a dry erase marker to write on flats/sharps and I can use sticky tack and a white strip of paper to cover any bars that we aren't using.

Today we were working on the second portion of our Teddy Bear lesson.  When it came time to play the melody, we discussed how to identify sol/mi on our instruments by first looking at the paper xylophone.  I love asking students to come up and demonstrate what we are going to play and I have found that my classes are much more successful when I use this approach.

You can also check out the visual we used during the lesson.  While I like this visual, I think I will create another version that includes the rhythmic notation.  You can find the visual pictured in the Freebie section.

The Countdowns Begun

Yippee!!!  I made it through the holiday concert.  My kids did an amazing job tonight.  We performed at our local Barnes and Noble, which was a nice change of pace.  They cleared a nice space for us and our parents crammed in around the bookshelves and it ended up being a nice intimate setting.  I think I will definitely do another concert like this but maybe with less instruments.  I tried to limit it but then it felt like I took everything but the kitchen sink.  I'm not good at packing light.

This morning we had our dress rehearsal at school and I snapped these photos of our set up.  Typically I like to use my FlipForm risers for our orff set up but after being sick this week I didn't feel up to any extra movement.  Instead, I used my stash of carpet squares for comfier seating, as well as boomwhackers.

For one of the musical selections we were using boomwhackers with octivators.  I like how they sound when struck vertically against the floor, so the carpet squares were great for this.  When you strike them against tile floor you get an awful plastic sound, not ideal.

Now the that our performance is over, the countdown to winter break is on. 10 days to go!  :)

Fall Leaves

My Kindergarteners loved singing Fall Leaves and working on high/low sounds this week.  There is a cute little song in K Game Plan that I used with this activity but any short song about leaves would work.

The idea for this activity also comes from Game Plan but the visual is one I made myself.  After singing the melody, I would play a high/low sound on the glockenspiel (the instrument we have been working on playing) and a student would place the leaf on the visual.  It took about 7 minutes to give everyone a turn but singing in between helped keep them from getting restless.

I like to pair an activity like this with some movement because little bodies can only take so much sitting.  After we did this, we sang another song about leaves and created movement to go along with it.

Creating a Program: Favorite Resources

This is the second post in my series on Creating a Program.  Last week I wrote about coming up with a concert theme and this week is all about some of my favorite (holiday) resources.  Below are some of them.

Anything by Randy and Jeff is perfect.  They have a number of publications that are perfect for the holidays; Highlighting the Holidays, Making the Most of the Holidays.  Check out all their publications  here!

The link below is to a cool book with short stories that are perfect for orff dramatization.  Add a few sound effect instruments and they are a lot of fun.  Plus, these are a great jumping off point to create your own stories for Orff Dramatization.
http://www.amazon.com/Holiday-Stories-dramatization-Robin-Uhr/dp/B0006YH5QC

The Duet Recorder
Recorder Duet
Duet Time
Recorder Express

I'm not big on using recorded sound tracks, so all of these resources have orff accompaniment or none at all.  If you are looking for a performance track I would look at Music K8.


Next week's post, Creating a Program......making things fit.

Carpet Squares, Take 3!

Yet another way I use my carpet squares for rhythm.  The rhythm is created using rhythm sticks.  Repetition, repetition, repetition is the name of the game with kids.  I find that they don't get bored with this even thought it is, in reality, the same thing.  Put a twist on it and it's brand new!

Thanksgiving Freebie

I love using my pocket chart for rhythm/composing activities.  I recently used one during 2nd grade to learn about unbeamed eighth notes.  It is easy for kids to manipulate the rhythm cards and create patterns to play.  These are some halloween rhythm cards that I used recently with my 2nd graders but I also have Thanksgiving and Christmas sets.  Below is a sample of the Thanksgiving quarter note cards.  If you would like to download and print a set for your classroom visit the Freebie section of my blog.

Creating a Program: Theme

Recently a teacher who follows my blog emailed asking about how I start or come up with a concert program.  Over the next few weeks I will post about this; how I go about creating a program and putting a twist on package programs.  I hope this is helpful as you plan for your holiday performances or for another later in the year.

This may sound crazy but I start planning my winter program in May!  I don't finalize anything but I want at least a vague idea of where I'm headed and what date I'm working towards.  I find that starting my year with these events semi planned helps give me direction and lower my stress level.  It doesn't concern me that I'm not sure which kids will be in my group because I can always tweak things later to meet the overall ability of the group.

My winter concert is more on the traditional choral side of things.  Most of our singing is standing on risers with some stationary movement.  However, I do like to add some dances in with small groups and our orff group does all of the instrumental parts and some highlight pieces as well.  In addition to all of this I like to have some sort of script and offer some kids the opportunity of a narrators role.  I usually create this script so that it fits the theme of our program and highlights some of the skills involved in the performance of the piece.

When I am planning for this event I always like to start with a theme.  One year it was A Passport Through the Holidays another Toys.  Usually a specific piece inspires the theme.  For my Passport Through the Holidays concert it was Lo Yisa Goi, an Israeli Folk Song.  While this piece is not a traditional holiday piece, it had a great message that is prevalent at the holidays.  Once I have the theme it is easy to focus in on what other pieces of music would fit well in the program.

You can make just about any theme work.  Here are some jumping off points:

-by composer
-by region
-by holiday
-by subject (i.e. toys)

And on and on....

Since it is close to the holidays, what are some of your favorite themes for holiday programs?

Rhythm Building Blocks In Use

This week we sang about the zoo and created a B section using the Rhythm Building Blocks.  Here are the words my students came up with to match the rhythms on the blocks.  Each class was slightly different but ti-ti ta seemed to always be kangaroo.

More on Rhythm Building Blocks.

3rd Grade: Pease Porridge

The first quarter seems to be mostly review for my kids.  There are a few new things I introduce but more of it is content that we started last year and I find slightly more challenging activities.  This past rotation we reviewed downbeat, bar lines, and measures in 3rd grade.

After working to figure out where the strong beats were in the poem and adding the bar lines, we used body percussion to practice 4 different instrument parts.  For this lesson, I used a SMD melody so that we could review singing these patterns, finding them on the barred instruments and in some classes notating them on the staff (this was an extension that I did not have time for with all classes this rotation).

Melody:
Pease Porridge Hot  Rest  Pease Porridge Cold Rest Pease Porridge in the pot nine days old Rest
S        MM       S               S        MM        S              S        MM       S  S   M   S     M     D

Snap to show the strong beats.
Pat to show where the quarter rests are.
Clap the rhythm of the words.
Sign the SMD pattern in the melody.

Formation:  Seated Circle

I set the instruments we were using around my staff rug.  We used xylophones (SMD), lollipop drums (strong beat), triangles (rests) and rhythm sticks (rhythm).  We transferred the parts to each instrument and then played them altogether while singing the melody.  We rotated clockwise one instrument, reviewed the parts and performed it again.  This process was continued until everyone had a chance to experience playing each part.

SFOC Guest Post

I was recently asked to write a guest post for the South Florida Orff Chapter's Blog.  You can check out the post I wrote and all of the other great resources here:

http://southfloridaorff.wordpress.com/2012/10/15/guest-post-emily-quezada/

Parachutes and Ribbons and Scarves, OH MY!

I'm soooooooo excited!!!  This week one of my parents mentioned that she wanted to donate something to our music program.  After asking how much she was thinking of gifting, I sent her a list of materials that were around that price.  I can't tell you how excited I was this morning when her little one walked in holding Artie Almeida's Parachutes and Ribbons and Scarves, OH MY!

I have been sitting here looking through the pages and getting more and more excited about the fun lessons I will incorporate this year.  I love Artie's stuff and I can safely say (even without testing this with my kids) that this is a resource well worth purchasing for your classroom!  Below is the link to this book on West Music.

Parachutes on West Music

Orff: Bar Bags

I'm looking for your feedback....this is the first year I will be taking students from my current school out into the community to perform.  We will be giving a Winter Concert at the Barnes and Noble Book Fair and I'm taking my chorus and orff groups.

Now, I have thought ahead and limited our instrumentation to those that will be the most convenient to move but I'm still a bit concerned about transporting some of my barred instruments.  I don't have far to go but I am considering purchasing some bar bags.  

What are your thoughts?  Do you use bar bags?  Is there another way to transport my instruments that won't cost me anything?  

I would love any advice you can give!

Rhythm Building Blocks

I learned about the Rhythm Building Blocks (technically called Bricks in Keetman's book) during my level II.  I loved the idea but I have never really incorporated them into my lessons.  This year I am trying to find as many ways as possible to incorporate them.  I have found that my kids have a hard time with clapping the rhythm of words, so it's something that I want to work on throughout the year.

I started the year off using them with 2nd grade (I wrote about this lesson earlier:  2nd Grade: First "Real" Lesson).  For this lesson, I chose the words to coordinate with each rhythm pattern but the next time we experience them, I will choose a theme and ask the kids to come up with words that fit the rhythms.  This is not only a great way for kids to visualize the rhythm but there is such a strong connection to syllables and reading.  I actually write the words under each rhythm using a dry erase marker (my blocks are laminated), so that I can easily move them from place to place.

To help build this into my lessons and visually remind myself (I am very visual!), I posted them on my cabinets.  Now they are easily visible and accessible anytime.  If something happens in the creative process we can just pull them down and create an ostinato, introduction, etc. on the spot.  They are also placed where the kids can see them while sitting in line, so I'm thinking we can even play a game with them at some point this year.

I attached the blocks to my cabinets using velcro dots (what a fabulous product!).  I made sure to put the loop side on the block so that they won't scratch any little fingers if we take them down to move around the room.

Don't have a set of blocks?  They are a free resource here:  http://www.scalantropio.com/Orff/images/building%20bricks.pdf