2/4 Tuesday: Fun Instrument Labels and Great Choral Rep

Welcome to 2/4 Tuesday! Link up below to join the party!

Below are 2 ideas from my classroom!

1. Cool Instrument Labels!

Classroom tour photos are still to come, I promise! In the meantime I thought I would share photos of my newly organized instrument shelving.

First off, my white shelving gets pretty scratched up so I decided to put shelf lining on my shelves. $1.00 a roll from Dollarama! 

I got a wonderful gift from a teacher friend who knows my retro 90's style! What cute mixed tape labels  from Target! They go perfectly with my room. I use them to mark where on the shelves the instruments should go. Aren't they cute?!

2. Choral Picks for Fall 2013

I have chosen some rep for my 2013/2014 grade 4-6 Choir year! I am excited! Here is what our choir is singing for Fall 2013.

Murasame by Victor C. Johnson

This is a beautiful and neat arrangement of a Japenese folk song. I can't wait for my kids to sing it. Click HERE for a sound clip! See below to hear King College Choral Arts Camp perform the piece. Lovely!

Amani Utupe by Patsy Ford Simms. 

This is a gem and you have most likely heard it or worked on it with your students. Easy to learn Swahili text and upbeat, catchy music. Have a listen HERE!

One Voice by Ruth Moody

This is a beautiful piece originally sung by the Wailin' Jennys of Manitoba! We have some amazing folk artists here in Manitoba and Ruth Moody is definitely one of them. She has arranged the piece for various choirs, and an Orff arrangement is also available! Check out a live recording of The Wailin' Jennys below and check out Ruth Moody's website HERE for the sheet music and Orff arrangement.

Thank-you for checking out this week's 2/4 Tuesday!

2/4 Tuesday! Ideas for the Music Classroom!

Join my Linky Party! Or at least check out all of the links! Thank-you to everyone who linked up last week, even our late arrivals!

I'm including a couple random ideas. My classroom tour photos are still to come this week!

1. The Best Beatbox Video You Will Ever See

So I have to teach a double class in my little room. That's about 50 grade 5/6 students in my itty bitty room. So to get settled into the space for the first time, we watched this amazing video! I fast forwarded his talk at the beginning though, a couple jokes that wouldn't be good for the kiddoes ;)

2. Student Workbook/Journals

This is something new I am trying this year. It's quite a bit of work, but I think it will be worth it. Hoping anyways!  I am trying these Music workbooks out with my grade 2 and 3 classes this year.

First, I bought a whack of notebooks from Staples (4 for 99 cents!) and cut them in half.

Then I decided what I wanted inside them. I decided to put three copies of each work page (that I know for sure I'm using) in each booklet. One copy for each term, which also helps with having consistent assessment. I used glue tape from the dollar store put the pages in.

 I decided to do "Composer of the Season" this year instead of monthly composers.

 Youtube performance video reviews (reflective thinking).

 Rhythmic dictation sheets.

 Simplified rhythmic dictation as well.

 Self-assessment sheets for singing. Students mark a plus sign, checkmark or minus sign beside each sentence. Plus means "I do this every time", checkmark means "I do this most times" and minus means "I need to work on this".

 Ta and ti-ti worksheets for grade 1. Poem from Doug Goodkin's Intery Mintery.

Ta-a worksheets for grade 2.

Click HERE for everything I have included in journals.

I like the idea of this because written assessments are in one spot and progress from term to term can clearly be seen. We'll see how it goes! What do you do to keep track of written work?

Link up and join the party!

Welcome Back Bulletin Board! And a random fox video...

After 4 days of school, and only 2 days with the kids, I am pooped!

My Music room was under construction, but I was able to get in there on Thursday and get most of my room set up. I started with this super cute bulletin board, an idea that I got from Made for Music Teachers. Click on her link for the printables! She got the idea from Mrs. King who you also need to check out if you haven't already!

 My bulletin board!

And that is supposed to be a NEST not a weird canoe! 

Bach, get it? Like the composer? Like "back"?! Like a chicken sound?! I love it.

Speaking of animal sounds, ever wonder what sound a fox makes? This video is hilarious! Maybe not for your students, but just for your own entertainment. I'm sure after your crazy first weeks back you yourself need a brain break like I did. Hahahaha. And here it is:

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and make sure to SLEEP! You need it!

How Instruments Are Made Videos!

Yesterday was the last day of school! Yippeeeeee!

When school is almost done and it's always nice to find easy, low key and interesting activities to do with the kiddos that are also at least somewhat educational!

I found some really interesting videos of how different music instruments are made. 

I had grade 4, 5 and 6 students watch the videos and complete (in writing) the following statements...

"Something I knew before watching this video was..."

"Something I learned from watching the video was..."

"Something I found interesting was..."

Here are the three videos that grade 4-6 students responded to last week.

How It's Made- Cymbals

How It's Made- Acoustic Guitar

Making a Djembe

Enjoy!

-Steph

Music Monday is Coming Up!

I am happy and proud to be a Canadian Music Teacher Blogger! 

I am looking for even more of us! Where are yooooooou?

I am extra proud to be a Manitoba Music Specialist and Blogger! Music education is thriving in our province and I am fortunate to be a part of it!

Head over to Teaching Is A Gift to grab your province button and link up! 

Music Monday in Canada is put on every year by the Coalition for Music Education. Every year there is a theme and a song is chosen as our "Music Monday Song". The idea is that students from all over Canada sing the Music Monday song on the first Monday in May, at the same time! 

This year our theme is "Filling the Skies with Music" and the song is incredible! Canadian astronaut Chris Hatfield and Canadian band The Barenaked Ladies teamed up and wrote "I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing)". The song was recorded while Chris Hatfield was aboard the International Space Station! The video is so neat and the pairing of musicians is so inspiring!

Check this out! 

What kinds of Music advocacy events does your school/division/province/country support?

- Steph

Neat Videos!

It's officially SPRING BREAK! Wohoooo! 

I was exhausted this week! I could barely keep my eyes open!

The kids are ready for a break too. I shared these videos with my kids this week to take a 5 minute chill break. After each video, we discussed what we enjoyed and what we maybe didn't enjoy while watching the videos.

Check them out!

The Vegetable Orchestra

Soooooo neat! I had a lot of students who, after watching this, attempted to make their own at home!

Cello Wars by the Piano Guys

This is awesome! I LOVE Star Wars and so many of my students do as well. Especially boys. 

This was a great opportunity to talk about electric instruments that we usually hear as acoustic. 

You Da One- by The Pentatonix

This is a great video and all of their arrangements are amazing! Rihanna is coming to our city soon, so a lot of the older kids got extra excited for the concert as we watched this video (waaaaayyyyy more appropriate than a Rihanna video btw...). After watching this, we discussed a cappella music, and what each person's role in the ensemble was in this video.

Enjoy!

What cool videos do you find on Youtube that are appropriate for the Music room?

- Steph

The Planets! Part 1

I love "The Planets" by Gustav Holst! I have studied little bits of it with my kids in the past, but this year I decided to really expand on some ideas and create a unit that has lasted about 8 classes. Manitoban students study the solar system in grade 6 Science, so the cross-curricular connections have been great for students to get engaged!

Here is what we did!

Day 1

I introduced our unit by putting together a Smartnotebook file that included:

 Brainstorm what we know about planets already.

 

 Discover/discuss how Planets are named after Roman gods.

 How all of this relates to music. Touch each planet to find out!

Discuss what we hear in the Mars and Venus movements (instruments, phrasing, mood, etc.).

Click HERE for the FREE Smartboard file! I promised that I've shared it this time!

Day 2

Next the students did a Gustav Holst Webhunt! I had a list of questions for them to answer. Students used the internet to find their answers.

I took all of their answers to create a Holst autobiography. Click HERE for the video. Students studied from the video to prepare for a short quiz about Holst.

 

 

Stay tuned for Part 2 and 3 of The Planets unit!

 

- Steph



Technology Tuesday- Melody Street and Young Music Genius!

I am currently working on orchestral instrument families with my grade 2 students. I have been trying out some different tech resources to help us learn about this. Check out my post Orchestra Activities for the Smartboard to find on-line resources that I have tried out earlier this month.

Thanks to Brittany over at Making Music Memories who commented about how wonderful Melody Street is! Thanks for introducing me to Melody Street Brittany! It was actually one of those many things that I had pinned and then forgot to look at. Oops!

Melody Street is FANTASTIC! It is great interactive story for iPads but also works on your Smartboard or just anything that will project a video from your computer. We started by using Melody Street on our Smartboard. We listened to the story of "The House on Melody Street", starting with chapter one. Watch it on Youtube: 

The House on Melody Street

After watching each chapter and learning more about the instruments, we played the instrument guessing games found HERE on the Melody Street website. There are many different games, but we played the "Memory Card Game" and "What's That Instrument?" on the Smartboard as a whole class and it worked well.

During the next Music class the students tried "Young Music Genius", a great iPad app and it's free! In pairs, my grade 2 students used the iPads and played an instrument sound matching game on the Young Music Genuis app. There is also a memory card game that's fun to play. They loved both games! 

Young Music Genius

I love sharing ideas! Please let me know what you think of these resources! I would love to her what you do with your students as well!

- Steph

Classical Music Videos with a Twist!

Technology Thursday (sometimes Tuesday) begins now!

Every year in January and February, my grade 2 and 4 students prepare to go to the orchestra. Here in Winnipeg we have an amazing symphony concert series designed especially for elementary students. The performances include dancers, artwork, visual effects, and children performance collaborations!

As we study orchestral instruments and the concert repertoire, I always like the children hear or see different interpretations of the pieces. Here are two excellent Youtube videos to show your students, especially if they have already heard the orchestral versions.

"Ode to Joy" by James Turner

Beatboxing Peter and the Wolf

So cool eh?

What are your favourite classical music videos with a twist?

- Steph