The Nutcracker

In 2nd grade we study The Nutcracker and I encourage kids to bring in any nutcrackers that they have at home to show the class. This year, one student and her grandpa made a homemade nutcracker just for music class! How cool is that?!

Concert Season!!

Here are some pictures from all of the wonderful concerts we have had this December. I'm always so proud of the kids and this year I had 100% attendance at all of my concerts!! Not a single kid missed! All 43 kids at the choir concert, all 46 at the 3rd grade musical, and all 38 at the 4th grade musical...that's 127 kids!! WOW!!!

5th and 6th Grade Choir Concert

Singing "Carol of the Elves" by Janet Gardner

42 kids!! The biggest choir I've ever had!

3rd Grade Musical- "The Grumps of Ring-a-Ding Town"

Hear the merry bells ring!

Being "Grumpy"

We're ornery and crabby!

Mrs. Gault's Class

Mrs. Schepp's Class

4th Grade Musical-"The Grumps of Ring-a-Ding Town"

We all do better when we work together!

Snowmageddon! HELP!!

Mrs. Foster's Class

Mrs. Grochow's Class

They wanted to do a grumpy picture, too!!

Turkey Tunes

Every music teacher knows that Christmas is one of the busiest times of the year for us. Musicals, concerts, programs...you name it, we have at least 3 to direct! So of course I am just now getting around to updating my posts. I had a meeting the week of Thanksgiving and wanted a fun activity for the sub to do with the 1st graders that would be easy, so I created these Turkey Tunes (although I know they aren't really tunes, they're just rhythms...but let's not get too technical!). You could add solfege syllables to each rhythm and then perform it on a pitched percussion instrument or boomwhackers, then it really would be a Turkey Tune!


I created turkeys and then several feathers containing tas, ti-tis, and rests for the kids to put on the turkeys. Working with a partner, they created a rhythm pattern and then clapped it. After a while, they got a worksheet and copied down one of the rhythms they created. Then, they got to color their turkeys. It was a simple, easy rhythm lesson and the turkeys looked really cool!!

Busted! and other Bass Clef games

The 5th graders just finished studying the bass clef notes. I posted last year about the centers that I use (Treble and Bass Clef Centers). I replaced the Swat the Staff game with a new game I found on Pinterest called Busted!. The kids really liked this game. Here are the directions:

I also created a memory game using some foam flowers I had left over from my spring program last year.

After we finished Bass clef, we reviewed all of the notes on the grand staff. I used the M&M Note Name Challenge from the Making Music Fun! website. Christmas colored M&Ms were on sale so I bought one bag for each class and it worked out perfectly. We found each of the notes in the treble and bass clef, and then I had them do some spelling words in either treble or bass clef. They were only allowed to eat their M&Ms if they could correctly spell "baggage" in both treble and bass clef. Talk about motivation!



"Apple Tree" Orff rotation

My 1st graders are working on playing the steady beat on an instrument. Eventually I will assess them on playing a steady beat bordun. We practiced this by rotating through a series of instruments and playing the steady beat while singing the song. I set my rotation up so that every student would have an instrument all the time. This seems a bit crazy, but I found that it worked better than when I used to just line all of the students up behind the xylophones and metallophones only. When I did it that way, only 5 students could play at a time and the other 20 quickly got off task. This way, everyone has something to play every time and stays focused.

I set the instruments up so that there was a barred instrument every 2 or 3 instruments. I also used a variety of drums and woodblocks to have different timbres. We played through the song one time and then chanted "One, two, three, four. Mallets down get off the floor. Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Hurry don't be late!". By the end of the chant, each student was at the next instrument and ready to play. We rotated through about 8 instruments and the students never got tired of playing the same song over and over again.

Tempo Centers

I created another new center this fall. This one is for tempos. The words we were working on were: Largo, Lento, Andante, Moderato, Allegretto, Allegro, Allegro con brio, Presto, Ritardando, and Accelerando. I used this with 4th grade.
Here are the centers I had:

1: Fishbowl: I found some fishbowl bulletin board decorations on Amazon to make this center. I simply wrote the definition in the bowl and the term on the fish. The students had to match the correct term and definition.

2: Listening Lab: I have always wanted to incorporate some kind of a listening lab into my centers, but was never really sure how. This year, I got a new portable Bose speaker that will play music from my iTunes using Bluetooth. I let the students have my school iPod, which is full of over 800 songs that are completely clean and school appropriate. The goal was for the group to select a song to listen to and then guess what the tempo of that song was. Once they had made a guess, they used a metronome to check their answer. One of my metronomes allows you to tap the beat and will then register the tempo you are tapping. They used a sheet I created with approximate BPM of each tempo marking. Once they learned how to use the metronome and iPod, the kids seemed to really like this center, and the music was soft enough that it wasn't distracting to the other groups. 

In case you are wondering, it was Minion Day at school on this day!

3: Cup Stacking: I know that I always use this one, but the kids like it and it's easy to make. I wrote the tempo terms on the bottom of each cup, and in order to use the cup to make a tower, the student must correctly define the term. 

4: Metronome Masters: I think that teaching the kids what a metronome is and how it works is a big part of learning about tempo. At this station, each student had a job. Student 1 created a tempo pattern using ta and ti-ti flashcards. Student 2 selected a tempo marking. Student 3 set the metronome to play at a beat somewhere within that tempo's range. Student 4 performed the rhythm on rhythm sticks at the appropriate tempo. 

*Note: This one was a bit hard because the students really struggled to play each flashcard at different tempos and didn't know whether or not they were correct. It was especially hard because everyone wanted to use the fastest tempos! I"m not sure how well this center worked, but at least it exposed them to the difficulty of playing at very fast and very slow tempos and taught them how to use a metronome. I guess that's something!

5: Tempo Showdown!: Showdown is a game that I got from the idea of Kagan structures. To briefly explain, Kagan structures are different methods/activities that help students practice information in small groups. 

Here is how Showdown works: Every student has a marker board and a marker (or a piece of paper would work if you don't have marker boards). I created a set of cards using notecards that contained the tempo definition on one side. The students placed the cards face down in the middle of the circle. One student flips a card over for everyone to see. Each student writes the correct answer on his/her marker board. When everyone is done, one person yells, "Showdown!" The groups shows their answer at the same time. If everyone is correct, they give each other a high five/fist bump. If someone is wrong, they help find the mistake. 

Here are the centers directions I posted on each file folder, the Tempo sheets that are included in each folder, and the Listening lab sheet to fill out. 

Surround the State in Song

"Surround the State in Song" was a great event again this year! I've posted about this every year, but if you don't know what "Surround the State" is, it is a 5th and 6th grade honor choir hosted by the ND ACDA chapter. Students from all over the state attend a day-long rehearsal at 5 different locations around North Dakota. They rehearse the same songs and perform a concert at exactly the same time, 4:00. This way, the students are literally surrounding the state in song! What a cool concept!

I took 7 students from my 5th and 6th grade chorus. We also have choir members from a private Catholic school and some of those students attended as well. Here are some pictures from our day.

A little break between rehearsals!

Don't they look good?!

The members from our choir! So proud of these young people!! :)

Kahoot!

I have recently been introduced to a great on-line game called Kahoot! (www.getkahoot.com). It is an interactive game that allows me to create quizzes using multiple choice questions. You can also create discussions or surveys, but I've never used those.
I start by creating a quiz. So far, I have made a dynamics quiz, a tempo quiz, and a music symbols quiz. You are allowed to insert images as well which makes it great for identifying symbols. The students each need their own computer or iPad to play the game and must have your code to enter. The question will be displayed on my Interactive Whiteboard (you could just use a projector) and the students click the correct answer on their devices. They are given points for answering correctly and quickly. The top 5 scorers are tracked after each question. It also tracks what answers were given so I can see if there is one question that all of the kids are struggling with. The students go nuts when they see we are playing this game. They absolutely love it! I know they use it in their regular classrooms as well.

Eagerly waiting for the next question!

If you look at the girl on the bottom left you can see what the student screen looks like. It just has the colors and shapes, no words.  

Here is what it looks like on my board. 

Star Spangled Banner

The 4th graders sang the National Anthem at one of our home volleyball games after completing their unit on the "Star Spangled Banner". They did a great job!

Ethnomusicology

Ethnomusicology is the study of music and instruments of the world. I mentioned in an earlier post that the 6th graders were using Google Classroom to create world instrument reports. I was amazed at the amount of work each of the students put in to their projects! I know that I learned more by reading their reports than I ever learned teaching the lesson by myself. After they were done with their reports, they chose one instrument to present to the class. Here are a few of the completed reports.

Ethnomusicology Report
Ethnomusicology Report

Ethnomusicology Report

Ethnomusicology Report

Ethnomusicology Report

Ethnomusicology Report

Trouble with Treble Clefs and Silly Staves!

It seems like the treble clef is one of the hardest music symbols for students to draw. It still scares some of my 6th graders when I ask them to put a treble clef at the beginning of their compositions!

The 1st graders are working on identifying the staff and the treble clef this week. We had a scavenger hunt in my classroom and everybody had to find and stand by a treble clef that was somewhere in my room. Between my borders, posters, and student art works, I have over 20 of them scattered around my classroom. It was fun to see the kids discover more and more around the room.

For our treble clef activity, I had them practice drawing treble clefs. I found a tracing worksheet on-line and each of the kids practiced tracing the clef with a crayon, then with a pencil, and finally they could try to draw one on their own. The kids that were able to draw them on their own were so excited!!

All by himself!!

I also did a staff activity. I split the class into 5 groups and gave them each a pile of items. Using those items they had to create some sort of a staff. When they had created one way, I asked them to find a different way...and another way...and another way! Some of the groups were able to get really creative! And it definitely drove home the lesson that a staff has 5 lines and can be short or very long. Here are some of the creations they came up with.