Yes, I have not fallen off the face of the earth, lol! I hope you all had a wonderful December! Things are back in full swing in Erie but I wanted to share a song that my 5th graders started before winter break. They're reading songs with ti now. I'm so excited! I've not gotten this far in the Kodály sequence before! The school I was at before was a "bilingual" school (I've blogged about this before) and there was such a gap that we could never "get to it." With this being my 3rd year at Red Hawk I've been able to "catch-up" my students and get them where I'd like them to be in the sequence. With them reading ti at this point in the school year I'm hoping that we can start to get into altered tones before the end of the year! Okay, I took a tangent, but here's a song that my mom actually told me about that can be found in "Singing Games and Rhymes for Middle Years", which is published by the National Youth Choirs of Scotland. I can't find nor do I have a primary source for the song I can't find nor do I have a primary source for the song. But, I'm using it with my kids regardless because it contains ti in a pattern that they haven't practiced as much. Here the song: The game is super fun and the kids LOVE it: Formation: lines of 6-7 students, all facing "forward" in the line. Action: The first person of each line has a playground ball. On the first beat of the song they bounce the ball. On the second beat they catch the ball. On beats 3-4 they pass it over their head to the person standing behind them. That student takes the ball and repeats the pattern of bounce-catch-over head (2 beats for this action). This repeats through the end of the song, for a total of 4 times through the pattern for the entire song. The student who has the ball at the end of the song runs to the end of the line. All the students in their line spread their legs and the student with the ball rolls the ball through the legs of their teammates. The first team who rolls their ball through all their team members' legs "wins." I have added that between rounds of play they have 10 seconds to shuffle their line. If you don't do this, only the first 4 people in line get to bounce the ball and only the back people get to roll the ball. Here are some pictures from one of my 5th grade classes playing the game: First person is bouncing and catching the ball: The ball is passed overhead The second person bounced and caught the ball and is now passing it over head: The last person (the 5th in line) got the ball at the end of the song, ran to the back and rolled the ball up between their team members' legs: On my to-do list is to create a PowerPoint for them to practice reading this song. It's quickly become a class favorite! I wanted to let you all know about a collaborative Kodály blog that I'm taking part in!!! Aileen Miracle, Lindsay Jervis and I started talking about it around Thanksgiving and are now getting it up and running (in huge part to Aileen's work, thanks Aileen!!!) It's called Kodály Corner and will consist of blog posts from 8 different Kodály teachers from across the nation. Aileen has started us off with our first post and will be posting again this weekend. There will be two blog posts weekly in which we will take turns sharing different teaching ideas and strategies. Please head over to Kodály Corner to check it out!! I hope you all have a GREAT week!!!
The Yellow Brick Road Blog is a website dedicated to providing music teachers with fun education resources for serious music literacy.
This is a fun file that I've been working on and finally posted. My Sugar Rush Rhythm files are pretty much the same, but with a candy theme instead. This is the image for Bundle #1, but they are sold individually or in one of three bundles. Each concept file contains multiple flashcards that I'll walk you through as well as 10 activities for using them for reading. First, there are large Flashcards. You can use this with a multitude of flashcard games: Sing What You Don't See, Poison, etc. Something fun to do with flashcards, be it rhythm or melodic, is extract the element that you're working on, have one half of the class sing or clap the element and the other class sing or clap the rest. So, in the card below, if la is the new element, the boys would only sing the la's and the girls would sing "everything else." And then of course switch. This can also be transferred to rhythm flashcards. Just another way to use flashcards. There are small flashcards, both numbered and un-numbered. These are great for centers or small group games. Also included in the file are staves on which students can use manipulatives to transcribe the stick notation onto. There are a few different games with which you can use these: There are landscape flashcards that are great for all those flashcard games too!: Here's an extension idea. I found this puppet this year (those of you that read my blog know that I LOVE puppets): Basically, you can build your own Monster Puppet, as all the parts come off. I use this as an incentive to performing a flashcard by themselves. If they do, the can add a part to the puppet. They EAT it up! Here are the team cards for the Monster Melody Madness Relay game. Basically, it's a glorified team game of Post Office. The students are in 2-6 teams. The teams are lined up, like a relay team, on one end of the room with the cards spread out on the other side of the room. The teacher either sings or plays a melody, the first person races to find that card. To make it more competitive, you can add time limits to find the cards or only the first team to find the card wins that round. Here are some sample monster cards: There are also small landscape cards, that can be used like the other small flashcards. These fit nicely into an envelope to play Post Office: They also fit well in these: I found a bunch of these at Walmart this year before school started but you can also buy them at Zipit. You can use these with beat passing games: instead of getting "out," a student reads a card instead. For instance, you can easily turn "Pick-a-Pumpkin" into a hand passing game or a beat passing game, using a small pumpkin. Here are the links to the files: so-mi la do Bundle #1: so-mi, la, do re low la low so Bundle #2: re, low la, low so high do fa ti Bundle #3: high do, fa, ti This I just finished this evening and will be added to my store tomorrow. I made some disappearing song files and keep meaning to make more. This one is a Halloween themed one, to use with the song "Pumpkin, Pumpkin." It practices the song on text: The rhythm: The solfége: Then they read it again, teachers choice. Since it's a "Monster Stole My Melody" file, I personally would have them read the solfége: And then the beats are removed, one by one, as an animated monster comes across the screen and "eats the song." This continues until the entire song is gone and they're reading the song from memory. I'll upload the link as soon as it's posted on TpT I hope you saw my post that my email was hacked. I can access it again and it's up and working. Remember, now through the 31st for every $25 you spend at my TpT Store I'll email you $5 of product. PLEASE do NOT put the free product in your cart as you will be charged. You can email me at my school or home account. . . or for good measure, send it to both, lol! This was thoroughly a Monday, I'm ready for a new day tomorrow! :)
I love using iconic notation and manipulatives in my music lessons. When exploring pitch patterns (solfege or note addresses), the hand staff is a powerful and ultimately convenient tool. It is always 'at hand' and provides instant 'hands-on' learning experiences. (Pardon the puns; I can't resist!) If the hand staff is a new concept/technique to you, you can adopt it easily and quickly. Simply have students hold their left hands in front of them, palm toward body, and treat their digits as the five lines on a staff. Have students touch on lines (fingers) or in spaces (between fingers). Identify a starting point, e.g. "G on the second line is so," and touch 'notes' as you sing simple pitch patterns. You might also find it useful to have students trace a clef of their palm to help them envision the staff and identify "G." I like to use visuals to help students relate their hands to the staff. Here are a few examples of things I've done: I post a hand silhouette that corresponds to existing staff lines on my whiteboard. If you don't have a staff-lined whiteboard, create a poster by tracing your hand and drawing staff lines that extend from finger tips. (The above picture is a bit distorted. The one below is better.) BTW, I have a ready-to-go printable Hand Staff Poster and Note Heads kit in my TPT store. The Rhythm Building Blocks in the above picture are also available in my store. I helped music teachers who attended one of my workshops make these gloves and flying notes. The gloves are inexpensive, stretchy knit ($1 per pair) and fit children's to adult's hands. We drew the staff lines on with a permanent marker and made the notes out of wood pieces (flat circles and sticks) purchased at a craft store. We then painted the wood black with acrylic paint. It was a quick, easy and useful project. Kids love these! Finally, here is my 'Scissorhands' version of the hand staff. Yes, it's one of those crazy projects I envisioned and created late at night! I used a heavier fabric glove, five dowel pieces, black paint, needle and black thread, and a touch of glue. My students get a kick out of this one, but it's not nearly as practical as the glove pictured above. Thought I'd share it anyway and give you a glimpse into my strange teacher mind. : )
The closet key is a fantastic game that your students will love. In this post I share how to create Solfege magnets using free printables.
Some of you are "lucky" and are still on winter break. . .. I'm not one of those "lucky" ones. But, it's all in the eye of the beholder, isn't it?! It was a really fun first day back. The kiddos were really excited to share about their break and ready to get back into the swing of things. Speaking of getting back into the swing of things, we brought this favorite back in 4th grade today. We used it in 3rd grade for low la but are bringing it back now to prepare syn-co-pa (feels like I've been prepping this forever. . . . .). Here's the song: This is a fun boomwacker part that we added with it in 3rd grade: And here's a really EASY Orff accompaniment that my 3rd graders this year did for our Parent Engagement Night: As I mentioned, we're prepping syn-co-pa so here's a new PowerPoint that I made: First, we have lyric slides: Then there are some low la prep slides that I included for next year's 3rd grade: After preparation comes practice, so here are a couple of the practice slides we'll use for review with 4th grade as a warm-up when prepping syn-co-pa: Here are the rhythm preparation slides: And here are the practice slides: After syn-co-pa is presented we'll sing it on solfége, using the stick rhythm and maybe even play "Remote Control" with it: And we'll practice reading the solfa on the staff, with the rhythm. Again, we might use an inner hearing game for this: I mentioned in an earlier post that I know I need to do a better job practicing reading Absolute Pitch Names, so here are those slides: Once we've read syn-co-pa in numerous songs we'll finally get to these cards. I made them for the Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer game but never got to them. Things happen and the kids we're prepared enough, so we "rolled with the punches" and had to change our pacing: I'm presenting at CMEA (Colorado Music Educators Conference) at the end of the month: one session called "Upping the Ante" and another one called "Manipulative Mania". This is for the "Manipulative Mania" session, sponsored by ROCKE (so, all you Colorado folks, you can buy this at CMEA this year!). I LOVE the way this turned out and we'll be using this as an assessment in a few weeks. Here's the beat board, the oars act as barlines: The students will have four canoes and they must put them in the correct order to match the song: Using the back side of the canoe, they can compose their own 4-beat rhythms on each canoe using a vis-a-vis marker. The boards can also be used with other die cutes such as fish, boats, seashells. Here's a couple fish thrown on: If you would like a copy of the PowerPoint above, it's available at my Teacher Pay Teachers store and includes the non-holiday song sorting game from the Rudolph file. I hope you all have a GREAT weekend!!
Chrome Music Lab- Andrew Keegan shares 5 lesson ideas to try to save you time. Full of practical ideas to share with you students.
High Shoals Elementary School Music Blog, Oconee County GA, Orff Music Instruction
High Shoals Elementary School Music Blog, Oconee County GA, Orff Music Instruction
Sing, sing, sing! I want my students to experience beautiful, in-tune singing and I am always on the lookout for songs with solos. I know students are more successful in pitch matching when they sing unaccompanied and have opportunities to sing alone. While I use several songs with solos in the primary grades, I don't use as many in the older grades. Here is one that has been very successful with my older students. I often start with several knots tied in the rope so that a few students are singing the solo, (which cuts down on the initial fear factor for the singers.) I learned this song from my wonderful Level III teacher, Liz Arcaro. Once a student has sung a solo (or duet, or trio, depending on how many knots I tie in the rope,) they go to a barred instrument and accompany with a simple bourdon on C and G. What are some of your favorite songs with solos?
Music a la Abbott Amy Abbott Kodály Inspired Blog and Elementary Teachers Music Education Resource
Confession time: I'm sometimes a Sunday night planner. Okay, a lot of times I end up planning on a Sunday night. Now, I have my year, trimester and month plans scoped out of what I want to teach. What I find myself on Friday nights doing is putting down how I'm going to teach it and the song literature and activities that go with that. My first are practicing ta & ti-ti and of course "Jingle Bells" a good song for isolating ti-ti ta ti-ti ta on the "jingle bells, jingle bells" part. Now, pardon my rush but the only version of Jingle Bells on my computer is in augmentation of how I sing it and have my kids read it: We're going to be doing some reading work of ta ti-ti in the high concentration portion of the lesson and deriving the ti-ti ta ti-ti ta on "jingle bells, jingle bells" is going to be my transition into the "change of pace" portion of the lesson, which will be a dance that goes to Jingle Bells. There are two ways that I do this dance. The easier version uses a parachute and the more advanced version has concentric circles with partners. Here's the parachute dance directions: Formation: circle, everyone holding on to the parachute. Action: Verse (32 beats total) Beats 1-4: heel-toe-heel-toe with the right foot (dashing through the snow) Beats 5-8: four slide steps to the right- like a side-ways gallop (in a one horse open sleigh) Beats 9-12: heel-toe-heel-toe with the left foot (o'er the fields we go) Beats 13-16: four slide steps to the left. (laughing all the way) Beats 17-32: repeat the first 16 beats Chorus (32 beats total) Beats 1-2: with parachute in hands, three pats on feet to the rhythm (jin-gle bells) Beats 3-4: three pats on knees, to the rhythm (jin-gle bells) Beats 5-8: four pats at waist, to the beat Beats 9-16: lift the parachute over the head. I call a color and those students with that color let go of the parachute, turn around in place and re-grab parachute. Now, if your students are really careful those students on the colors called can run under the parachute to another spot of that same color. This is the FUN way to play! ;) Beats 17-32: repeat the first 16 beats. When I do this with older kiddos we do it in a concentric circles. Formation: concentric circles, facing partners (one in the outside circle, one in the inside circle) Action: Verse (32 beats total) Beats 1-4: heel-toe-heel-toe with the foot that leads in the counter-clockwise direction. This is the right foot for the outside circle and the left foot for the inside circle (dashing through the snow) Beats 5-8: four slide steps counterclockwise- like a side-ways gallop (in a one horse open sleigh) Beats 9-12: heel-toe-heel-toe with foot that leads in the clockwise direction (o'er the fields we go) Beats 13-16: four slide steps clockwise. (laughing all the way) Beats 17-32: repeat the first 16 beats Chorus (32 beats total) Beats 1-2: with right hands, partners pat each other's hands three times to the rhythm (jin-gle bells) Beats 3-4: with left hands, partners pat each other's hands three times, to the rhythm (jin-gle bells) Beats 5-6: with both hands, pat three times as in the first two steps. **This will NOT match the rhythm Beats 7-8: clap own hands three times. **Again, this will NOT match the rhythm Beats 9-16: join hands with partner and do a full circle turn Beats 17-32: repeat the first 16 beats, with the exception that in the last step, after the full circle turn everyone takes an extra step to the left and then has a new partner. This has a really nice flow and even the older kids enjoy it! Have a great day!
This is a fun file that I've been working on and finally posted. My Sugar Rush Rhythm files are pretty much the same, but with a candy theme instead. This is the image for Bundle #1, but they are sold individually or in one of three bundles. Each concept file contains multiple flashcards that I'll walk you through as well as 10 activities for using them for reading. First, there are large Flashcards. You can use this with a multitude of flashcard games: Sing What You Don't See, Poison, etc. Something fun to do with flashcards, be it rhythm or melodic, is extract the element that you're working on, have one half of the class sing or clap the element and the other class sing or clap the rest. So, in the card below, if la is the new element, the boys would only sing the la's and the girls would sing "everything else." And then of course switch. This can also be transferred to rhythm flashcards. Just another way to use flashcards. There are small flashcards, both numbered and un-numbered. These are great for centers or small group games. Also included in the file are staves on which students can use manipulatives to transcribe the stick notation onto. There are a few different games with which you can use these: There are landscape flashcards that are great for all those flashcard games too!: Here's an extension idea. I found this puppet this year (those of you that read my blog know that I LOVE puppets): Basically, you can build your own Monster Puppet, as all the parts come off. I use this as an incentive to performing a flashcard by themselves. If they do, the can add a part to the puppet. They EAT it up! Here are the team cards for the Monster Melody Madness Relay game. Basically, it's a glorified team game of Post Office. The students are in 2-6 teams. The teams are lined up, like a relay team, on one end of the room with the cards spread out on the other side of the room. The teacher either sings or plays a melody, the first person races to find that card. To make it more competitive, you can add time limits to find the cards or only the first team to find the card wins that round. Here are some sample monster cards: There are also small landscape cards, that can be used like the other small flashcards. These fit nicely into an envelope to play Post Office: They also fit well in these: I found a bunch of these at Walmart this year before school started but you can also buy them at Zipit. You can use these with beat passing games: instead of getting "out," a student reads a card instead. For instance, you can easily turn "Pick-a-Pumpkin" into a hand passing game or a beat passing game, using a small pumpkin. Here are the links to the files: so-mi la do Bundle #1: so-mi, la, do re low la low so Bundle #2: re, low la, low so high do fa ti Bundle #3: high do, fa, ti This I just finished this evening and will be added to my store tomorrow. I made some disappearing song files and keep meaning to make more. This one is a Halloween themed one, to use with the song "Pumpkin, Pumpkin." It practices the song on text: The rhythm: The solfége: Then they read it again, teachers choice. Since it's a "Monster Stole My Melody" file, I personally would have them read the solfége: And then the beats are removed, one by one, as an animated monster comes across the screen and "eats the song." This continues until the entire song is gone and they're reading the song from memory. I'll upload the link as soon as it's posted on TpT I hope you saw my post that my email was hacked. I can access it again and it's up and working. Remember, now through the 31st for every $25 you spend at my TpT Store I'll email you $5 of product. PLEASE do NOT put the free product in your cart as you will be charged. You can email me at my school or home account. . . or for good measure, send it to both, lol! This was thoroughly a Monday, I'm ready for a new day tomorrow! :)
The Yellow Brick Road Blog is a website dedicated to providing music teachers with fun education resources for serious music literacy.
Once in a while I do a blog post more aimed at a music teacher audience, and this is one of those posts. This is the hello song that I sing to start every music for kindergarten and first grade. …
We've got some rhythm going on in our classroom right now! OK - so maybe we're not dancing around the classroom yet - but considering I've still got over three weeks to go, that could be a good thing. I made these rhythm cards years ago, and use them every year when I teach music. Each card represents one beat of music, and each stick is one syllable (or clap). The words are pronounced and clapped just like they would be said in every day talking - so, penguin has two equal parts, mud turtle has the emphasis on the first syllable, elephant has the emphasis on the last syllable, etc. But because each card is only ONE beat, the four (equal) syllables for salamander must be done in the same time it would take for the one syllable (clap) for bear. Did I explain that well enough? (I know many of you that teach music use the "ta ta" or "ti ti", but I like using these words because it ALWAYS works with my classes. I've added a magnet to the back of each card so we can use them on the black board or any magnetic surface. We started by practicing a few patterns as a whole class - because the cards have magnets on the back, it's easy to switch them around. I also introduced the one beat rest (quarter rest). We talked about a measure of music (the number of beats in a bar), and worked with some 4 beat measures (a 4/4 time signature). We also had a lot of fun figuring out what rhythm patterns our names were - mine (Jennifer) would be an elephant ... figures . I keep my rhythm cards in baggies with about 10 - 15 cards in each baggie. I divided my class into groups, and let each group make a few rhythm patterns to practice. They got to perform (by clapping) their rhythm patterns for the class. I then invited each group up to the black board to start making a large rhythm pattern with 4 beat measures. Each group came up and added to what the previous group had done. Before a new group could add their cards, they had to clap the rhythm pattern already made on the blackboard. At the end we had a WHOLE SONG! A whole song composed by my class. FABULOUS!!! We practiced it a few times, had a few laughs, and practiced it a bit more. Tomorrow we are going to integrate our poetry writing by creating a rap to go along with our rhythm pattern - I did stress that only appropriate lyrics will "fly", but I'm not that nervous ... it's going to be so much fun! I'm going to record their raps on my iPad - watch out, Grammys ... here we come!
My third grade classes have been focusing on folk songs. We have added Orff accompaniment, learned the cross-over technique, and performed line dances. They really enjoyed our activity with the song John Kanaka! First we talked about the history of the sea shanty: Then, we learned the song and discussed how the steady beat of the song might have helped sailors get their work done more efficiently. As we listened, the students identified the macro and micro beats and we practiced by using a pat-clap-pat-clap pattern. Next, the students transferred the macro/micro beats to a hand clapping game. First we practiced with paper plates: Holding the plate flat with their left hands, students pat the plate with their right. Then, they clap their right hands beneath and plate, pat the plate again, and clap their hands above the plate. They continue this pattern throughout the song feeling the macro beat (patting the plate) and the micro beat (clapping hands below and above): plate, below, plate, above, plate, below, plate, above. After they had a the movements down, we added tambourines and turned it into a circle dance! We got really fancy and rotated our outer circle on the fermata! Great job, third graders!
A few weeks ago, when I posted my lesson plan template, I was asked to show how I would actually use this template in planning. With that in mind, I've included a version of a lesson that I teach often. In this plan I refer to form books and mapping, both are tools used in ETM to help students develop both self-actuated and traditional music symbols. ETM refers to music education training and resources provided by The Richards Institute of Education and Research or Education Through Music. "Let's Do it Again!" is a collection of folk songs and song experience games collected and developed by the Richards Institute. For more information about ETM and the research done by the Richards Institute, please feel free to check out the information I've provided here. ETM
Sarasponda
2, 4, 6, 8: A chant for music class. Blog post includes notation, ostinati, extension activities, and more for your elementary music lessons!
Hi everyone! I hope that you've had a GREAT week! I've been busy making some Thanksgiving files and have started using them with my kiddos. The kids have been having a GREAT time so I thought I'd share about the files and also a few of the activities that we have done with them. My most recent files are the "Turkey-Lurkey Football Rhythm Blitz" files. While these have turkey clip art, they can be used any time of year (but I'll probably revamp this file to be more non-fall specific, especially after Christmas, as the Super Bowl gets closer). Directions for six different games are included but really the possibilities for any of these files are endless! I'm going to tell you about two of the games. The first the "Turkey Lurkey Football Blitz Game." Basically, this is a rhythm relay race. There are four teams (mine sit on the risers) and their cards are spread out on the floor across from them, on the other side of the room. I either say (the easiest version of the game), clap or play a rhythm. One student from each team races across the room to find the card. From here there are few ways to play. One is that everyone who correctly finds the matching card on the first try gets to keep the card for the team. Another is that only the first person to find the card gets to keep the card. Players rotate taking turns until the allotted time for play is done (I usually play 5-7 minutes. If you go too much longer you lose their attention.) The kids love this game, the kiddos that aren't looking for the cards are cheering on their team and often time will end up chanting the rhythm at their teammate is looking for. Here's the other game. It includes the use of flashcards. The file contains large and mini-flashcards: Now, at Target in the dollar section I found these this fall: I knew that I wanted to find a way to use them and the mini-flashcards fit inside them perfectly. Today was the first time playing this and my 5th graders LOVED it. I had 6 of the football popcorn cups and 6 sets of the mini cards. They broke into teams of 5 and spread their cards out on the floor. I would clap a pattern and the team would look for the card. The rule was the first card I saw their team raise was their answer and they could only put their card back into their popcorn cup if their answer was correct. Sound familiar? It's basically a glorified group version of Post Office! Here's Hayden showing his team's answer: This picture of Jayden cracks me up! He's been one of those kiddos that's hard to "win over", he had a great time with this activity: And here's my buddy Coleman and his team: These of course are available on my TpT Store, in the following sets: ta ti-ti quater rest half note tika-tika ti-tika tika-ti syncopa tom-ti ti-tom Another file that I've create is the Free The Birds files: This collection contains 10 different games, including 4 PPTs (in addition to the 9 other game ideas). In the PPT students are in teams, pick turkeys and sing the melodic pattern to "Free the Bird". Slides for these games are in either stick or staff notation. Within the sitck notation, there is one game with note heads and one without note heads. With the staff notation, there is one game in the key of G and one in the key of F: This file also has large and mini landscape cards, in addition to flashcards (pictured above): There are also different colored slides to do relay races, similar to the Turkey Blitz game above: These games are available in the following sets: so-mi la do re low la low so high do fa ti bundle I also have a Turkey Rhythm Fraction file, check it out by clicking here. I'll be working on some files for use in December and will be having some freebies available only to my Teachers Pay Teachers and Facebook followers so please follow me on both TpT and Facebook! :) Have a GREAT Friday everyone!
5 easy (and free!) sub plans for the music room: Includes great ideas for sub plans, as well as a way to download the sub plans as an editable Word document!
In September and October I'll be writing posts about planning lessons. A well-planned lesson is a joy for both teacher and student. Refining p…
Ideas and Lessons from my Elementary Music Classroom. I utilize Kodaly and Orff philosophies in my classroom- check back for ideas, SMARTboard activities, and more!
It's back to school time! Yay! I am so happy to see all of you again! I am looking forward to a fun school year with you! Here's what's up so far! Grades 4 & 5 (Rooms 13, 17 & 19) are starting the year with the song "Somebody That I Used To Know" by Gotye. We began by watching a cover of the song by the group Walk of the Earth, where each member plays one part on the guitar. From left to right: Player 1: Uses the guitar as a percussion instrument Player 2: Plays the ostinato (a repeating pattern) which is actually just IIV to I chords Player 3: Plays the guitar melody Player 4: Plays the off-beat chords (on beats 2 & 4) Player 5: Plays accent chords Then we watched another version of the song: Gotye saw that so many people were doing covers of his song that he made a compilation video of a whole bunch of YouTube videos from around the world! Next week we will be learning to play this song on the Orff Instruments: From: http://musescore.com/user/24296/scores/49627 Grades 1/2/3 are learning the Tritsch Tratsch Polka by Johann Strauss. We have coupled it with Deborah Ziolkoski's story and movement about the ringmaster and tightrope walker from Fun With Composers. We are learning about ABA form in music (same/different/same), and a little bit about the life of composer Johann Strauss. Here is a recording of it - ask your child to show you the story and movement! Did you know that the Tritsch Tratsch Polka is also used in the video game Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games? It can be found in the Synchronized Swimming section! Pretty cool, huh?
Excuse our noise... musicians at work! :) After reviewing rhythm patterns at the beginning of the year, 3rd grade classes began working on layering rhythm patterns together. This is one of the more di
October 12, 2013 Fourth and fifth grade students are reviewing "rhythm" (the short and long patterns of the beat) in music class...
A blog about elementary music education.
It's summer time!! I haven't blogged in a while because I've been working on some really great resources. (And enjoying the fact that I am no longer a first year teacher!) I am almost done,but until then, here is a great first day of school/music class game. This is an icebreaker and I am planning to use it with my upper primary/middle school classes. Here is a link to the pdf of this worksheet. This is on Google Docs. Just open it and under file, click download! Enjoy!
So much popular music overly sexual and violent. I’m always really happy to hear a positive and appropriate song on the radio. One great song that’s popular right now is “Best Day…
Looking for a fun way to review the instruments of the orchestra? This write the room activivty was a huge hit with my elementary music students!
Composing a Symphony of Sound Education
The Yellow Brick Road Blog is a website dedicated to providing music teachers with fun education resources for serious music literacy.
I say just in the nick of time because, as I’ve mentioned recently, I feel like I’m losing some focus. In preparing for Miss Weber to join us next week I got out our curriculum flow ch…
For the first 10 years or so of teaching music I was free to use any lesson plan template that I chose. I'll admit that mostly I just made my music plans fit on whatever was available. Then around the time that I really started thinking about what would be most useful for me and really playing with templates, my school district handed down a required online template. I used dutifully used that template with as much success as could be expected and had actually made plans on asking for a special exemption this year when much to my delight and relief we were told that we didn't have to use the "mandated" template any longer and that several templates would be suggested, but that we were to focus on using lesson plans that worked for us. HALLELUJAH! And there was MUCH rejoicing! So - I took all of my favorite elements of what I liked and got rid of what didn't work for my class and came up with my own template. I write in the cells that are open and I highlight the parts of the template that I need for the lesson. My favorite part of the template is the bottom where I can make notes about the needs of individual classes. I am leaving this in spreadsheet form so that hopefully you can edit it to meet your own personal needs. Let me know how it goes. If you run into trouble or are unable to edit the form, please let me know and I'll gladly send you the file. Due to damage to the file, here is an updated version in a PDF form. Feel free to print. UPDATED TEMPLATE HERE! July 2014
Teaching Canon Singing. Organized Chaos. Strategies for introducing canons in elementary choir or general music lessons.
Students in first and second grade are learning about Rondo Form. A song is in rondo form if it has an A section that is repeated several times, with new sections in between each A section. An ex…
Valentine's Day is almost upon us again, so I decided to post some activities I've done this week and last week that could be used for a Valentine's theme. If you look at the Kodaly Corner blog (linked on the right...a collaborative blog I contribute to), there are some more Valentine's activities if you're interested. I have no idea where I learned this song, but my students love it! I've been using it this week, and I plan to link it to Saint Saens Carnival of the Animals Aquarium movement and the book Swimmy. The game is simple. On the first day I discuss with the class what the name of a group of fish is (school) and why do small fish travel in large groups (to not get eaten by big things like sharks). The first time we play, I lead, walking around the room with my hands swimming like fish fins and singing the names of students in the song (in place of Suzy). Each new student joins the line behind me (hands on shoulders or just walking) until the entire class is part of the school of fish, and for the last time through the song we sing, "Oh, everyone, everyone, we love you!). My students today spontaneously started giving each other hugs. Feel the love, people. On another day when we play, the newly called student becomes the leader and must stop at their chosen person when we sing the long "Oh" so the class knows whose name to sing. If you want to, you could have each new leader be in charge of singing the last phrase of the song as a solo to assess singing voices. After the game was over, students froze with a shark fin on their heads. I then played the half step Jaws theme at various tempos and pausing at different times. Students put the notes in their feet moving when the keyboard was playing and stopping when the music stopped until all had returned to their carpet spots. One little boy today said, "I LOVE this part!" Either the same lesson or another lesson the same week, I use the book, Swimmy (which shows the idea of a school of fish and different predators). I usually read the book the first time with the Aquarium music as accompaniment in the background. Then on another day when I introduce the Aquarium music, I ask where they've heard the music before and students can usually tell me from the Swimmy book. I then introduce briefly the idea of the Carnival of the Animals piece in which the composer wrote small songs to represent different animals. So what animals does this song represent do you think? Then I introduce a listening map for Aquarium. Here is a simple one. To further familiarize the class with the piece, we make our own Aquarium. Half of the student use blue scarves with partners holding opposite ends to make the water waves, (you could do green seaweed as well if you need to) and the other half use bright, colorful scarves to pretend they are the fish swimming in the aquarium. Then they switch parts and the water students become fish and vice versa. We, of course, talk about moving like the music sounds. This will lead to learning about legato (and then staccato when we move on to doing the Kangaroo). So, you could use these activities during Valentine's week, or not. It doesn't have to be Valentine's themed. By the way, my meyersmusic visuals website I used to have set up is now defunct, but Blogger doesn't have a good way to post full-sized visuals for you to print out and use. I'm in the process of changing the visuals website over to a Weebly website which allows me to post not just picture files, but also other document formats. Check back and you'll find some of my older blog visuals reposted to the new site soon. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. "Oh, Kodaly, Kodaly, we love you!"
Song and Dance: Three great activities for older students, including two great folk dances and one singing game! Music education ideas, activities, games, and songs | Technology tips for the music classroom | Resources for the elementary music room.
When you're teaching someone about music, using certain activities involving printable PDFs can enhance your student's understanding.
So it seems like you love TED too A couple of weeks ago I shared 8 of my favourite TED […]
