Winter Sing

Every year the students, staff, and parents gather during a school assembly and sing winter themed music for 30 minutes.  It rocks.  This is one of my favorite events because it involves the whole community.  Each year I struggle with having enough space for everyone.

The way this sing-a-long works is that each grade learns (memorizes) one of the winter songs.  Then each grade stands and leads the singing of that song.  I don't rotate them on the stage due to time constraints and space issues.  I also have sprinkled in some all school sings (no one stands.)  The choir kicks off the sing with a short performance.

Most of the songs are Winter themed (not holiday themed.)  I have a diverse population of students, and our classroom parties are themed for winter as well.

Jingle Bells     All school sing

Suzy Snowflake   Kindergarten

Jingle Bell Rock  First Grade

Frosty the Snowman  Second Grade

Sleigh Ride (body percussion)  Third Grade

Winter Wonderland  Fourth Grade

Marshmallow World  Fourth and Fifth Grade

Hot Chocolate  All school sing

We Are Family  Fifth Grade

Favorite Teacher Pay Teachers Stuff

I have decided that my gifts are not in creating cute and inspiring documents for my students to learn from.  Thank God for Teachers Pay Teachers. Here is a list of my favorite things.

One of my first purchases was this Kodaly packet.  I love the music street visual, and the songs for presenting the concept to the students.

Another great resource were these bundles.  I use them mostly for presenting a concept or practicing a concept. 

 here

 here

 here

 here

These games have gone over really well with students:

 here

here

 here

Freebie- some sellers do Flash Freebies and you have to follow them to get emails about these events.  

 here

What are your favorite sellers or files?  As you can see I love this wonderful resource, although sometimes I go overboard!  

First Steps in Music

Super excited to have attended a workshop by John Feierabend.  Also excited because my librarian is ordering all of the picture books in his series for our school library!  The workshop I attended was only  half day, so I feel like I got a taste of what First Steps is all about.  Here is what I have done so far...

1. Vocal Warm up
     Part of the program is to warm up and explore the voice each day.  While I have done some of this in the past, I am guilty of just jumping in to the lesson without taking time to do this.  After the workshop I went on Teachers Pay Teachers and found some great Halloween themed vocal explorations here.

2. Echo/ Call and Response songs:

    My kids are huge fans of this section.  The songs are fun and upbeat and the students don't have to memorize or spend time reading words to get to the music making.

3.  short songs

    I have been taking short songs they will learn in kindergarten and first grade and singing them here.  I want the student to learn the songs so later we can pair them with concepts.

4. Arioso land

   The first time I did this with students, I expected them to have difficulty.  However, we have sang different things to each other throughout the year, so they took to it like it has always been part of our music class.

5.  Movement warm up

   Students focused on moving their body to the directions tend not to talk.  Which is awesome!  I feel they are listening more to the music and it gives me a perfect moment to introduce them to quality classical music!

6.  Movement for form and expression

   I am ordering the Move It books, but here is where I have done some finger plays such as: Two Little Black Birds, Five Little Pumpkins and such.

7. Movement with the beat

    My students had a fun time playing the drum yesterday as I sang "Listen Listen."  Their favorite part was playing really fast, but a few students would vary the dynamics.  My first graders are beat competent, so we are starting to move putting two pulses on each side.

8. Song tales

  This has been the most fun.  Students attention is excellent as they listen to these beautiful art songs. They love the stories and it broadens their world as they hear these masterfully told stories in song.

Parent Teacher Conferences

This year I tried something new at Parent Teacher Conferences.  I came across Aileen Miracle's Data Tracking on Teachers pay Teachers here. After exploring all of the different documents, I decided to work with the yearly tracking Powerpoint.  I changed what she had in each grade to accurately reflect what I teach in each grade.  Then I used this document at Parent Teacher Conferences to discuss each child's progress.  The parents loved getting a sheet that showed them exactly what we have worked on, and I loved how organized and professional my conferences felt.

Music for Children Volumes Pieces

What am I going to use to teach __________ concept?  This is the second question I find myself asking when lesson planning.  I have songs, games, instrumental pieces, movement ideas, and the more years I teach the more ideas I have.  How I am going to streamline what I do to a finely honed craft?  This summer I took level 3 of Orff at UMSL.  It was wonderful.  Now I am even more motivated to use the volumes to help me teach a concept.  This post will become a list of all the volumes pieces that I use and what I use it for.

Music for Children Volume One: Pentatonic

Part 1: Nursery Rhymes and Songs

3. Tinker Tailor (2-3 grade)

             1. spoken piece with student improvised body percussion accompaniment

             2. Sung like the volume but end on do with student improvised xylophone accompaniment

4. Bobby Shaftoe (1st and 2nd grade)

            1. sung with different bordune accompaniments

            2. using part b sop xylophone ostinato

6. Wee Willie Winkie

           1. In Kindergarten we use this song to help teach 4 voices

                         -upstairs glissando up, downstairs glissando down, ect

                         -triangle 8 times after 8 o'clock

31. Ding Dong diggiggidong

          1. I teach this in 3rd grade with sixteenth notes and cannon

          2. I use simple bordune acc.

41. Boomfallera

        I haven't used this one in recent years, and I don't know why because I like it.

Part 2: Rhythmic and Melodic exercises

I use most of this in conjunction with other songs.  I use these ideas as jumping off points.

Rhythmic Rondos

1. I use Mary Beth Hepburn's take on this song from her workshop.  You can search for her stuff on Music is Elementary's website.  I think it is a free download either as a lesson plan or workshop handout.

Part 3: Instrumental Pieces

3. Walk running walk walk, running running running walk (3rd grade)

     -Learned this in my level 1.  We first moved the rhythm of the words by the Teacher playing it on a hand drum.  We started just by walking then the teacher added in random spots of running.  Eventually, the teacher led us to the rhythm of the song. 

7. Dynamics!  Love teaching the students how to play their instruments with dynamics.  You mean we can play the xylophone softly?  Who knew!?

38.  Teach the High Low pattern of the Sop. xylo (first 8 beats) then have the students improvise/ compose the second 8 beats in the style of the piece.  Add in the woodblock part but I put on a drum. 

Create a body percussion or movement B section.  

40. Brian Burnet Level 2 taught this to us with words.  I use this piece when reviewing canon in 4th grade. 

Coming soon Volume 2!

How do you use the volumes?

    

Books in the Music Room

While walking through our school's library, I have stumbled upon some new books.  Here are a few that we have used in the music room this year.

Little Goblins Ten is sung to the same melody as Over in the Meadow.

 Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do You Hear? is used the same as I do with Brown Bear but with new exotic animals. 

 Mary Wore Her Red Dress has the melody written in the back and is another great use of So Mi singing.  I got this idea from http://www.kodalyinspiredclassroom.com/ 

 Second graders are exploring train songs.  We partnered the reading of this book with Little Train of Caipira. Students then reviewed Engine Engine while moving in train lines.  Then we learned a call and response song "Chicka hanka."  After students could sing the response, we went to the xylophone to improvise.  At first students could only use E to create rhythmic variety.  Then I slowly gave them more notes until the were able to improvise in G pentatonic starting on la (E.) We kept playing with the recording and my students loved having the chance to share their improvisations.