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!

I Can Sing By Myself Sticker Labels!

I love anything that makes students motivated and comfortable to sing by themselves. Being brave to sing alone needs to be celebrated!  

Children love stickers and also love when people are proud of them. I thought my students would really appreciate a sticker that celebrates their accomplishment and they could wear it for others to see! 

I created a simple template for sticker labels that I will be printing off for my kiddoes.

Yay for singing by yourselves!

Click HERE for these free labels!

Kindergarten- highs, lows, and vocal exploration!

I love doing all sorts of vocal exploration with my kiddoes! 

"The Squiggle" by Carole Lexa Schafer is an oldie but a goodie. It's a story of a girl who find a string and creates different shapes and creatures with it. 

I read it with the little ones (K or grade 1) and we vocalize the shapes or "draw them with our voice". 

After the story, students create their own shapes with a skipping rope or draw them on the board and we try singing their squiggles!

Find the book on amazon HERE for under $7.00!

After presenting the activity this year I also showed 2 videos that reinforce high and low. The videos show excellent visual representation of sound, such as the squiggle activities do.

- Steph

Spring Concert- Thwacked!

While most of you music bloggers are blogging about finishing up school, we just finished our grade 4-6 Spring Concert!

Here are some highlights, as well as some homemade costume ideas that you might like!

Grade 6 Orff Club performed #9 from the Orff Schulwerk, volume IV, as well as an arrangement of Some Nights!

Next up was our guitar club, who performed "I Will Wait" by Mumford and Sons!

Up third was our grade 4/5 Orff club who performed an arrangement of I Knew You Were Trouble and an Eric Corbiere piece entitled "Hidden Path".

Here our recorder players are doing a movement section for "Hidden Path".

And on to the musical! This year we did Thwacked! By Dave and Jean Perry, published by Shawnee Press. The kids loved it! Click HERE to view the musical score and have a listen to their tracks!

We had a couple of ideas of our own, including two acting trees! Click HERE to see my process for creating the tree costumes!

We had beautiful renaissance costumes made by a volunteer years ago and I thought they would be perfect for the narrators to wear for this fairy tale! 

A staff member's daughter did amazing job creating the story book. It's two ornately painted extra-large pizza boxes! The book even opens up!

The story is based on a frog prince who thinks the sky is falling. I love the way the frog costumes turned out! 

 Stay tuned later on this week for the costume tutorial, including those cute hats!

We also added Chicken Little to the mix, along with her two "Mean Girls" inspired BFFs: Henny Penny and Ducky Daddles. Those hats were all white and were only $2.00 from Dollarama. I painted each one to match each character's outfit! The skirts with feather detailing turned out so well too! 

I like adding elements to our musicals that the kids come up with. The girls came up with the idea of having Adele's "Skyfall" somewhere in the plot! Perfect! Ducky says, "Don't worry my BFF, I will save you if the sky falls!" and she dances to the song to try and impress her hard-to-impress friends. Here she is: 

What a great time we had! It was a lot of work but it all paid off! And it really helped this year with having a student teacher during musical time. The kids did a fabulous job!

"Stay Tuned" for more costume and set ideas... and tutorials!

- 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

Pete the Cat! Rocking in My School Shoes Composition Unit!

I have been working with my grade 3 class on creating music for the book "Pete the Cat, Rocking in my School Shoes". It is really coming to life! 

These are the steps we took before getting to our end result.

Step 1:

The first thing we did was read the book "Pete the Cat, Rocking in my School Shoes"

by James Dean and Eric Litwin.

Find it  HERE on Amazon.

Step 2:

The students then composed a melody (as a class) to match the reoccurring speech pattern from the book. We used a Smartnotebook file to help us.

We changed things and voted on ideas as we went along. Here is our final melody:

Click HERE for the FREE Smartnotebook file. It looks like this:

Step 3:

Next I divided my class into 4 groups. Each group represented an area from the story, where Pete was wearing his shoes. Each group was in charge of creating a soundscape to fit their area (busstop, lunchroom, library, playground). While choosing instruments and creating their soundscape, the groups were to write down shapes and lines that represented their composition (something that they could refer to later).

Step 4:

Next, students each created artwork that represented a "snapshot in time" of their group composition. They were to refer to their group composition notes for ideas. Using chalk pastels, each student drew their groups sound (I told them to imagine that they could see the sound and asked them what it would look like).

After drawing their sound in pastel, each student had to draw their school area in black marker. They made sure to include Pete in their drawing!

Step 5:

Finally we put it all together! We read the story, singing the song every time it came up in the book. Each group held up their "snapshot" and played their soundscape at the appropriate time in the story. It was so fun! The grade 3 class is sharing their story via Polycom (video conferencing) with a class from New Jersey tomorrow and we are so excited!

Pete on the playground!

Pete outside waiting for the bus!

Pete in the lunchroom!

Pete in the library!

What kinds of things do you do in your Music room with picture books? Please share!

- Steph





DIY Solfege Fishing Game!

Here's my first official Make it Monday!

January is Under the Sea Month in Music! Grade 3 students will be working on all of their solfege signs this week, so to tie into our theme I made a solfege fishing game!

First, I found free fish clipart... that I love! This awesome clipart is here on Clker.com. After downloading the picture, I copied it onto 7 different slides in Powerpoint. On each fish I typed a solfege syllable. After I printed my fish off, I cut them out, glued them onto cardstock, and added a paper clip .

To make the fishing rod I simply used an old marker, twine, a magnet, and hot glue. 

I put my fish in a bucket and voila!

My fishing game is ready to go!

To play the game, I will either play a recording of "Do-Re-Mi" from "The Sound of Music" or "Under the Sea" from "The Little Mermaid". The rod will get passed around as the music plays. When I stop the music, the person with the rod must catch a solfeg fish! When the student gets a fish they must read the solfeg syllable and show the appropriate hand sign.

We tried it! The students and I found it difficult to catch fish from a bin, so instead we scattered them on the floor. I also felt that students needed practice with the hand signs so when a fish was caught the whole class showed the hand sign instead of just the fisher.

They loved it!

- Steph

Tips and Tricks for Engaging Rehearsals #2

Report cards are done- YIPEEEEEEEEEEE! I have been MIA on my blog with those darn things, concert prep, the flu, aaaaand a lame car accident this week (no one was hurt thankfully)!

Our school's K-3 concert preparation continues. 10 days until concert night number one. The kids are doing a fabulous job, but it is starting to peak a little early. At this time, students are getting close to the point where they are sick of the songs. WE CAN'T HAVE THAT YET!

Here are some more tips and tricks to keep your kiddos entertained as they continue to practice their concert songs over, and over, and over again...

I am not a fan of blog posts without photos, mostly because I have the attention span of a 6 year old... So I am truly sorry that I have limited pics for this post! I know it's a long one but it'll be worth the read!

MORE TIPS AND TRICKS FOR ENGAGING REHEARSALS:

How Does My Voice Work?

Show them this neat and super short video about the voice. As the video plays, stop it to clarify certain ideas. After the video, have your students place their hand high on their chest, near their throat, and say something together. They will feel a vibration and think it's so cool!

Thanks Denise on Pinterest for the cool video! 

Voice Production Video

Movement Words

Once students know the words to their piece, internalizing activities are super fun and really work the brain. Choose a word that repeats throughout the song. Have students do a non-locomotor movement instead of singing that one word. For example, instead of singing the word "tree" in one of our songs, I had the class jump. You could have them raise their arms, clap, or even stand and sit 

(they get a real kick out of that one).

Hula Hoop Internalizing

This is another internalizing activity that kids LOVE! Have one student stand inside of a hula hoop in front of the class. The class sings their song with a background track or piano accompaniment. The student in the hula hoop decides when to hop outside of the hula hoop. Once he/she does that, the class must internalize the words as the accompaniment continues. Once the student hops back into the hula hoop the class continues singing.

Positive Feedback from your Neighbour

I know this sounds simple, but it is a great easy trick for engagement. I went to an engagement workshop a couple months ago with Eric Jensen and he used this throughout the day. All you do is have the class say different things to their neighbours! For example, if you hear something good have your students say "You have a beautiful voice" to a neighbour or "Wow, you are a great singer!" or "Congratulations you just learnt a new part!" and give a high five.

Spot Call

Dollar store foam cutouts are my BFF. I use them for a million different things, but during rehearsal time they are fun to use for Spot Call. Spread out foam cutouts on the ground and have students sit on them when they come into Music class. Have a chart of the different colours on the board, either with dry erase markers or create a colour chart with construction paper. During a song, point to a colour and have the students sitting on that colour stand and sing. It's simple but a blast. They really get a kick out of internalizing! Plus it gives you a chance to hear individual voices more clearly.

Other Stuff

I also use tricks from my past posts for rehearsals. Click on the activity to link you directly to the post here on my blog.

Jitter Sticks

 

Movement Ball

Tempo Turn

What are you doing to get your kids ready for Winter Concert time?

- Steph

Tips and Tricks for Engaging Rehearsals #1!

I love the holiday season! Yipeeeee! And as much as our holiday musical songs can drive me crazy (I wake up in the middle of the night with them stuck in my head!) I love preparing for our annual Holiday Musical!

To keep from kids getting bored (as well as myself), I always like to add quick, fun and meaningful activities in my rehearsal plans. For our holiday musical, all of our grade 1 to 3 students learn the songs during their Music class and are the chorus on the stage for the musical. Grade 3 students choose whether or not they would like a speaking part and practice during lunch time.

Here are some activities that I love to do with my kids to keep them engaged, especially during that time where the kids think they are pros at the songs. They don't see the point in singing over and over and over again, but you know better! 

Visuals For Vocal Flexibility

Ribbon Sounds

I use this as a warm up or an "inbetweener" for rehearsal. All you do is draw different shapes with the ribbon wand in the air. As you do so, the students create vocal slides accordingly. They LOVE this! Sometimes, I'll get them to draw the shape in the air with their finger as they vocalize it. Once they get the hang of it, I ask a student to come up and be the leader with my ribbon wand. I got my ribbon wand for $1.00 at Dollarama!

Parachute Voices

This is a similar idea to Ribbon Sounds, but is not my idea. I saw Artie Almeida demonstrate this at the AOSA conference in St. Louis last week. She is AMAZING by the way! And yes, she IS the Mallet Madness woman! Check out her website at artiealmeida.com for excellent ideas. I was so excited when I saw her doing this as it is similar to the ribbon wand activity that I was already doing!

Artie used a slide whistle which was super cool, but you can also use your voice to do the vocal slides. Students hold a parachute and together lift and lower it, according to the changes in pitch that they hear. Eventually, Artie moved to singing solfege and the parachute moved accordingly. This is a great way for students to visualize pitch and where the solfege sounds are in relation to each other . I have also had a student do vocal slides instead of myself, while his/her peers moved the parachute. LOVE it!

I used a small parachute as I don't have much room for movement in my room. You can order 12' parachutes for under $40.00 at Concord Supplies.

Be sure to check back for part II and possibly III of Tips and Tricks for Engaging Rehearsals!

I will also be posting costume ideas very soon!

What tricks do you use to keep kids captivated?

- Steph

Trick or Treat Rhythm Game!

I have been playing a Trick or Treat rhythm game with my grade 1 and 2 students this week! We sing a song about trick or treating that I am actually not sure who wrote. The words are:

Up, down, up and down the streets.

That's where I go for my trick and treats.

Scaring all the ghosts... oooooooooh!

Scaring all the cats... meow!

Scaring all the witches in their big black cats!

If you know this song and you know where it is from, please share! I have also played this game with grade 3 students and we sing Boogie Woogie Goblin by Alice Oleson (a great song for reinforcing 

ti-ka-ti-ka).

Any Halloween song works for this game, especially songs about Trick or Treating. Students sit in a circle around a bucket or cauldron. Inside the cauldron are candy cutouts with a rhythm on the back of the picture. I give one student a wooden spoon to begin. While everyone is singing the song, the person with the spoon, walks around the circle GENTLY tapping everyone's back to the beat of the song. When the song stops, the student with the spoon on their back must take a candy from the cauldron and clap the rhythm. That student then holds up the rhythm for the whole class to clap together. The student who chose the candy now has a turn to walk around the circle keeping the beat of the song with their spoon. 

I had lame construction paper silouettes for my candy this year! Booooo to me (not the scary boo, but the "I suck" boo)! So because this activity is still on my mind and I don't want cheepo looking candy next year, I decided to create better candy cutouts right now! Click here for pdf of my new and improved candy cutouts. CANDY CUTOUTS I will print my candy on card stock and write 4 beat rhythm patterns on the back of the candy before I send them away for laminating. They will be all 

ready for next year!

What did you do for Halloween or Fall activities?

- Steph