Music In Our Schools Month's 30th Anniversary!

One of my favorite months is March, because that is when we get to celebrate MIOSM. I always try to think up some really fun activities that I wouldn't normally do during a lesson. This year is the 30th Anniversary of MIOSM, so I thought it would be fun to celebrate the last 30 years of music. I am always teaching the kids about classical music, but we never spend a lot of time on the music they are most familiar with. Each week was dedicated to a different decade: 80s, 90s, 00s, and today. Here are some of the activities I have been doing all month.

1) I created a display in the hallway with pictures of our staff members from the last 30 years. The first week I posted pictures of them in the 80s, the next week I posted pictures from the 90s, and finally the 2000s. It has been really fun listening to the kids (and even the teachers!) meet outside of my room each day trying to figure out who is who.

 

2) Each day I feature a "Artist/Group of the Day" from the current decade on my door. I show the picture, but cover up the name. As the day goes on, I reveal different hints about the group, include names, genre, and famous songs. The teachers have really enjoyed this one! Here is an example of one my 80s groups.

 

 

3) I pick around 6-8 songs from each decade and during that week the kids get to pick one of the songs to listen to at the beginning of class. I picked songs from a variety of genres and showed the music video to go along with it. The 80s favorite was "Old Time Rock n' Roll" by Bob Seger and the 2000s favorite was "Sk8er Boi" by Avril Lavigne! The last week of March is the years 2011-2015, so the kids get to vote on a year, but don't know the song I've selected. I'll be wrapping up the month by showing the kids "The Evolution of Music" sung by my FAVORITE group, Pentatonix. What a great way to tie together all 30 years!

 

4) The teachers did a surprise dress up day during 90s week. Several of us came dressed up in our 90s clothes. It was fun to see the old sports jerseys, butterfly clips, and acid washed jeans! Of course I completely forgot to take pictures this day! Sorry!!

 

The best part about all of this is that I hear kids outside of my doorway walk by and say, "Yes! We have music today!". They have really enjoyed listening to all of the different songs and it has sparked conversations at home. Several students came back the next day with a list of their parents' favorite songs from the 80s and 90s. They even made requests. After telling one student that AC/DC was more 70s than 80s or 90s, he went home and looked up "Thunderstruck" and informed me the next day that it was released in 1991. Guess what his class listened to that day!?

 

Here is a picture of my bulletin board for the month: "Music Makes Me _________". Each class filled out two cards to be used on the board. Answers included: in the zone, confident, pumped up, proud, concentrate, go for it, energized, and motivated. Thanks to our 5th grade teacher for giving me the awesome rock star bulletin board set. It couldn't have been more perfect for my theme this month!

 

Note Name Centers

I LOVE using centers in my classroom. It is a great way to practice concepts using games instead of group questioning or worksheets. I usually create 4-5 centers, depending on the size of the class. I generally don't like to have more than 4 in a group. I recently completed a large center rotation for my 5th graders studying bass clef and they loved them so much, I duplicated them the next week for my 4th graders who were starting to learn treble clef. In my 5th grade class, I spent one day doing a group lesson on bass clef. After that, they worked completely independently in their groups. After they had finished all 5 centers, I gave them the test. Every single student passed with flying colors!!

Here are the centers I used for treble clef and bass clef. I created directions for each one so I wouldn't have to repeat them each day. I made the directions general so they can be used for either treble clef or bass clef.

Mad Minute: I always like to have one worksheet station so I make sure that every kid is understanding the concept being taught. I created a Mad Minute note name sheet at a great website I discovered: http://secondrunnerup.com/mmmusic/form.php.  After they have finished all 30 questions on the Mad Minute, they work on some kind of note-naming worksheet.  I got my worksheets for this station from www.makingmusicfun.net (I like the crossword puzzles the best). For treble clef, I also added in a worksheet that helped the students practice drawing treble clefs. For the bass clef, I added a worksheet that gave them a chance to create their own pneumonic devices for remembering the lines and spaces. They really have fun coming up with  new phrases!

Name That Tune: This is another worksheet I got from www.makingmusicfun.net . The group works together to name the notes and then plays them on the Boomwhackers. It is really fun to watch the kids work together to figure out each song. When we do this with bass clef, I put the octavator caps on them to make them sound lower.

 

Connect Four: This is another fun game I could never do with the whole class. There is a new version of Connect Four called Connect 4x4 that is a 4-player game instead of 2. Students must correctly answer a flashcard to get a turn. Fun, simple, and it makes them think strategically!

 

Goldfish Spelling: You can never go wrong bribing your kids to learn with food! This was definitely one of the most anticipated stations! I made a goldfish bowl template and stuck it in a plastic sleeve (I call them lap packs and they are actually filled with lots of papers that I use for different lessons). Each kid gets 7 goldfish and a pile of spelling words. They use the fish as notes to spell each word on the staff. And of course, once they are done, they get to eat them!!

 

iPad Station: I am always looking for ways to use the iPads. I downloaded the Noteworks Free app which has a really fun treble clef game on it. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the free version only covered middle C-G. On the plus side, they are getting lots of practice with middle C and low D, two of the most common notes students get wrong on the test.

Swat the Staff: Since I don't have an iPad game for bass clef, I use this game instead.  A large bass clef staff is projected on the board and two students race to swat the correct line or space with a flyswatter. The kids love this game and it sometimes gets very competitive.

Mitten Memory Match: I bought a bunch of bulletin board decorations at Target last fall with the hopes of making them into different games. I used the gloves to create a memory game ( I know- they're gloves and I called it Mitten Memory Match-it just has a better ring to it!). I wrote the note on the staff on one card and the letter name on another.

I also have a game called Musical Pairs that I purchased that uses sharps and flats. This is a little more challenging because there are more cards, but it does give the answer on the bottom, so they don't really have to figure out the note name.

If you haven't tried centers in your classroom, I highly recommend them! They are a great way to keep your students engaged. Once you have your centers created and set-up, the students are really doing all of the work, leaving you to simply walk around the room and monitor what they are doing! Everybody wins!!

Music Festival

Each year I take my choir students to an area music festival where they get to perform in front of a judge and get feedback and ribbons. It was cancelled this year, so we decided to hold our own in-house festival instead. I had 15 groups prepare and perform solos, duets, trios, or small groups. The choir also performed a piece from our winter concert. A judge gave them critiques and ratings just like they would receive at a high school music contest. It was a great experience for everyone and it gave us a chance to show off our new choir t-shirts!!

Rondo!

After introducing rondo form to my 4th graders on Tuesday, on Wednesday one of my students showed up wearing this! How cool is that?!?!

Musique Concrête

Musique Concrete is an experimental style of music that uses recorded sounds. It was developed in the 1940s by Pierre Schaeffer. Sounds were manipulated by doing things such as playing them backwards, speeding them up or slowing them down, changing the pitch, or adding echo effects. After studying this style of music in 6th grade, we created our own Musique Concrete sound pieces using Garage Band on the iPads.

Each student came up with a theme for their piece and had to write a story to help explain what sounds we were hearing. They were allowed to record their own sounds or record sound clips from the Internet. Sounds were then looped, split, or modified within their pieces. Each piece had to be 48 bars long and contain at least 5 sound tracks. Themes chosen included hunting, sports, video games, storms, the rainforest, and the most popular choice: haunted houses and demonic children! There are too many projects for me to have time to upload them all, but here are a few of the completed projects.

 

Valentine's Day Fun!

I am a little behind this month, but here is my massive post of all of the fun Valentine's Day activities we did last month. It was a little crazy because I also had my 1st and 2nd grade musical and a music contest in February, but we did manage to get some Valentine-themed lessons covered.

"A Song for My Sweetart"
This is a lesson idea from the book "Kids Can Compose". I always have one of those giant bags of mixed candy on hand for Bingo prizes and such, and luckily the last bag I bought was FULL of Sweetart candies. The Sweetarts came in packets similar to Smarties, so it was easy to distribute them to each of my groups. Everyone simply got one packet to share.

The 4th graders are just starting the treble clef, so we used this lesson simply to practice the space notes. I would call out a note and they had to put their Sweetart candy on the correct space. I wanted them to also practice putting notes on the staff from left to right so that when we start reading music for recorders they are used to that. I found that several of the kids were just squishing them together in one spot or stacking them vertically, so I had them divide their staff into 4 sections. Then I would say, "notate an A in box 1, a C in box 2", etc. This made things much easier for everyone. After a while, I let them partner up and quiz their partners. The students who already knew the note names were partnered together and allowed to do lines and spaces or use ledger lines.

In 5th grade, each student was partnered up and given a glockenspiel and a cup of Sweetarts. They then had to compose a 4-8 note melody and play it on their instrument. Each group had to perform their melody for me before they could eat their candy.

Giant Beat Strips
This is an idea I got off of Pinterest from www.abbottmusic.blogspot.com . Kindergarten just learned about ta and ti-ti, but we were still reviewing how a ta is one sound and a ti-ti is two. To reinforce this concept and tie in Valentine's Day a little bit, I used giant beat strips with large hearts on them and split the class into 4 groups. Everyone took their shoes off and put them in the middle of the room (this part can get a bit wild!). I then clapped a rhythm pattern and they had to race to made the rhythm on the hearts. A ta was notated with one shoe and a ti-ti with two. It took a while for some of the kids to catch on, but once they did, we were able to cruise through the entire class. Although it was just a tad crazy (and stinky!), it was a LOT of fun!

Racing Heart Rhythm Race (or something catchy like that-I couldn't think of  a good name!!)
Last year I cut out a bunch of paper hearts with the intent of using them for a lesson and never did. So this year, I took those hearts and wrote a whole bunch of 4-beat rhythm patterns on them. I designed this to be used with 3rd-5th grade, so the rhythms contained mostly 16th note rhythms (which 3rd grade is working on now) and dotted quarter note rhythms (which 5th grade is working on). There were 2 of each rhythm. I scattered the hearts all over my floor and split the class into 4 teams. I would call out a rhythm and one person from each team had to race to find the correct heart. Since there were 2 of each, two teams could score or one team could get 2 points. The first team to 6 points won. (Side note, I would recommend laminating the hearts. The students tend to get a bit grabby when they get over-excited!). This was a great game and you could make it even harder by only clapping the rhythms and not saying them out loud. I often did that as a tie breaker or for extra points.

 

 

Valentine Post Office

I posted about this game last year. It is a game I downloaded from Teachers Pay Teachers and it works great with K and 1st. I grouped my classes into groups of 2 and gave them each a Valentine bag with rhythm cards inside. They take out the cards and I clap or play a rhythm and they have to find it and put it in their bags.