1) The first week I had all of my students color a MIOSM pennant created by the wonderful Mrs. Tracy King that I downloaded from Teacherspayteachers. I strung them all together and hung them in the hallway by my classroom. I'm on the same floor as the 3rd-6th graders so we don't get as many art projects decorating our hallway as the lower elementary, so it was nice to see a little extra color on the walls.
2) The 2nd week I gave all of the teachers a Staff Survey that I also downloaded from TPT. It surveyed the teachers on their musical interests and backgrounds. I wanted to inspire the students to get involved in music, even if they don't want to grow up to be a music teacher. I hung the surveys all over the school with the name of the teacher covered up so they had to guess. Would you believe that our 6th grade teacher was once in a punk rock band in California?! Or that our 4th grade teacher has been in 14 musicals?!
3) Every month this year I have featured a Composer of the Month on my main bulletin board. My March composer was John Williams, because I figured he was probably the most inspiring composer ever in the eyes of a student. Kids were constantly asking me if we could listen to more of his music! One of the activities we did was a Musical Masterpiece project. Each of the students started out with a piece of paper and were told to draw a picture to represent the John Williams piece that we were listening to. (Ex: If we were listening to "Jaws" they could draw a shark). After listening for a few minutes, everyone rotated to the left and began coloring on their neighbor's picture while we listened to a new piece (Ex: "Harry Potter"). We continued to do this for "Jurassic Park", "E.T." and "Star Wars". By the end, the picture would be made up of 5 different scenes drawn by 5 different people. It was really fun!
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| Giant class rotation. |
John Williams Continued: I went to the Dollar Store for milk and came home with 12 pool noodles that I made into 24 light sabers (again, idea courtesy of Tracy King!). We used these on the last week of the month to keep the steady beat in the form of a light saber battle while listening to "Imperial March". I think you could say the kids enjoyed it!
4) Each week I had a Music Trivia question with MIOSM stickers and pencils I ordered from NAfME.org as prizes. I ordered 150 pencils and ran out because I had so many kids get the answers! Here are the questions I used:
Week 1: What was the first song performed in outer space? (Happy Birthday)
Week 2: What instrument was once known as a sackbut? (Trombone)
Week 3: How many keys are there on a piano? (88)
Week 4: In which key do most toilets flush? (Eb Major)
5) I re-created the logo for this year's theme on the wall outside of my room and placed inspirational music quotes on the leaves. We had Parent-Teacher conferences at the end of the month, so I'm hoping that my numerous decorations around the building caught their attention and provided a little music advocacy!
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