Tuesday, September 30, 2014

What's Happening Wednesday - Week 5

Here is a glimpse into my week:
Kindergarten
This week we will continue to work on our five voices. However, this week will be more about students demonstrating and naming voices. We will do a couple examples by singing songs like we did last week, but I'll also pick students to demonstrate the voice and students will have to guess the voice used. This helps me assess how well students are actually getting this concept and how much more time needs to be spent on this. Some classes pick up on the five voices in a matter of just 3 or 4 lessons, others could take several months.

Songs we are singing in Kindergarten this week:

1st Grade
We have kept the beat to several songs the last few weeks and now we are finally going to be introduced to following the way the words go. We are going to take a look at Cobbler, Cobbler and look at how when we follow the words we end up with long and short sounds. Not only will I be using the song files linked below, but I will also be using my Beat vs. Rhythm Presentation, which you can find a link for below as well.

Songs we are singing in 1st Grade this week:

2nd Grade
This week students will be learning about our new note: ta-a. We will start by looking at Frere Jacques and finding all the long notes, but will then practice finding the rhythm in the other songs we know. If we have time, we'll play the half note game that is included in my Frere Jacques file.
FrereJacques-halfnotegame

Songs we are singing in 2nd Grade this week:

3rd Grade
Will continue to review half notes. We will not only take a look at the songs they know and put the half notes where they belong, but we will also practice clapping these patterns.

I'm also doing an activity with chair beats. I got this idea from a colleague and I'm going to give it a try. I put four chairs in the front of the room and explain that each chair represents a beat. Then I arrange students in the chair to represent different rhythms. One child in a chair is a ta. Two children sharing a chair is a ti-ti. One child stretched over two chairs is a ta-a. Empty chairs are rests. I'm having students create the rhythm patterns I write on the board to fit the chairs, I'm also putting kids in chairs and having them figure out the rhythm. Hopefully this will help with some of the beats of different notes.

Songs we are singing in 3rd Grade this week:

4th Grade & 5th Grade
I'm finally past reviewing ti ta ti and we are now working on introducing low so and low la. Scotland's Burning is a great song for introducing low so and we will take a look at that this week. We are going to sing the song and start to recognize where the notes are going up and down. We will then do the same thing with the other songs that we are learning.

Songs we are singing in 4th Grade & 5th Grade this week:
  • Scotland's Burning
  • Canoe Song
  • Chicken on the Fencepost
  • Lil' Liza Jane
  • Tideo
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Thursday, September 25, 2014

What's Happening Wednesday - Week 4

Here is a glimpse into my week:
Kindergarten
This week Kindergarten is focusing on their five different voices. (Of course we still keep the beat so we have something else to DO) The voices we focus on in music are singing, humming, whispering, calling, and speaking voice. I start out the lessons by using my different voices and having students echo. This helps them hear the voices and also gives them a chance to practice each voice.

All the songs we sing this week I'll be using the different voices for. For example we will start with just chanting Chop, Chop, Chippity Chop. Then I'll have a student pick a different voice and we will use that voice for the same song. For example if they say calling voice we will then call the whole chant. They have a lot of fun wtih this.

For She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain they will change the way the say the different sound effects. For example instead of just saying "Yum Yum!" After "We'll all have chicken and dumplings when she comes" they may choose to whisper "yum! yum!"

Songs we are singing in Kindergarten this week:
  • The More We Get Together
  • Echoing (This is my speaking, calling, whispering, humming, or singing voice)
  • Chop, Chop Chippity Chop
  • She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain
  • Frog in the Meadow
  • Engine, Engine Number Nine

1st Grade
First grade is still doing a lot of review of beat in preparation for rhythm. I'm choosing different students to come up to the board and keep the beat to several different 1st grade songs. Along with this we have several games we are playing to keep the beat.

-- Games --
Lucy Locket - Students form a circle on the floor with room around the entire circle. One student who is 'it' walks around the circle to the beat while the rest of the students pat the beat on their laps. When the song is over the 'it' drops the pocket (or object representing the pocket) in the lap of a student nearby. That student picks up the pocket and chases the student around the circle. (I'm not allowed to let them run, so they walk very quickly) If the student with the pocket catches the 'it' person they get to go back to their original place. If not, they become 'it' and the student who was 'it' takes a place in the circle. Then continue on.

Bee, Bee Bumblebee - Students sit in a circle and pass the bee (or object representing a bee) to their right on the beat. Whoever ends up with the bee on out has to leave the circle and grab a rhythm instrument. They become the beat keepers and keep a steady beat while the game continues.
(I have to give Lindsay Jervis credit for the rhythm instrument idea. I had played this game before, but didn't have anything for the kids to do when they got out so this game became a nightmare and I gave up on it. I tried it with students playing the instruments and not only did it give them something to do, but students weren't passing the bee so fast because they didn't mind if they were in the circle or not.)

Apple Tree - Students stand in a circle. One student (or you as the teacher) stands with their arms extended (almost like you are forming a bridge with an imaginary student) over the circle. Students start singing and walking to the beat. At the end of the song the 'tree arms' fall down taking one student 'out'. That student helps form a bridge with the original tree. As students get out start to form more 'trees' around the circle until all students are trees or you run out of time.
(Note: I like this game and my students request it ALL the time. The only problem is I do have a lot of students that don't follow the rules. Some want to become a tree so they purposely walk really slowly or take small steps and some don't want to be so they speed through the trees.)

William He Had Seven Sons - One student is the leader. They sit in a chair in the front of the room and keep a steady beat however they choose to. Students in their chairs follow the leader keeping the beat the same way. Student who is leading can choose one way to keep the beat or mix it up, just as long as they stay on the beat.
(The first time I play this I normally encourage them to have only one way, but once we get good at it they can pick more)

Songs we are singing in 1st Grade this week:

2nd Grade
2nd grade is almost ready to learn about the half note. They are singing several songs with both half notes and whole notes. Next week we will actually learn about the half note and put it into some of these songs we have been singing. To prepare, this week students are coming up to the smartboard and keeping the beat to all of the songs they know. Classes also got a chance to look at the rhythm of the song, but only with pictures. They noticed how certain notes are longer than one beat. I picked a few students to play the rhythm with a rhythm instrument to help reinforce it.

Songs we are singing in 2nd Grade this week:

3rd Grade
3rd grade is continuing to review whole and half notes this week. We are singing these songs (some new and some old) and then practicing keeping the beat and clapping the rhythms.

Songs we are singing in 3rd Grade this week:

4th Grade & 5th Grade
Have finished reviewing ti ta ti and have begun to work on songs that use low la and low so, since this is where we left off last year. More than likely we will not have much time after introducing low la and low so because we will have to start with concert prep in just 2 weeks! Ugh...

4th and 5th graders also learned the dance for Alabama Gal. They really like it and ask to dance it on a regular basis. :-) Here are some picks of my classes dancing:



Songs we are singing in 4th Grade & 5th Grade this week:
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Thursday, September 18, 2014

What's Happening Wednesday - Week 3

Here is a glimpse into my third week of school:
Kindergarten
Students are continuing to sing through the rules songs that I talked about in my post last week. We are also continuing to have experiences keeping the beat. This week I start allowing students to choose different beat motions. I always crack up at some of the choices students make for keeping the beat. We have the typical ones like clapping our hands, walking to the beat, or patting our head. But we also have some not so typical ones: shrugging our shoulders, blinking our eyes, or (a new favorite) swaying our hips back and forth.

Students this week will also continue to work on echoing short phrases. I use a lot of echo songs in the first couple months so that I can assess students ability to match pitch and echo short phrases. (One of our Kindergarten learning targets)

Songs we are singing in Kindergarten this week:
  • No More Pie
  • Chop, Chop, Chippity Chop
  • She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain
  • My Aunt Came Back
  • Engine, Engine Number Nine
  • William He Had Seven Sons
  • Frog in the Meadow

1st Grade
The goals for 1st grade are being able to keep the beat to various different songs. Thsi will prepare them for recognizing notes that are longer and shorter, which then leads into ta and ti-ti. Normally by Halloween time students are able to recognize the difference between two sound and one sound words and clap rhythm patterns for ta and ti-ti.

Songs we are singing in 1st Grade this week:

2nd Grade
2nd graders are singing many songs with half notes and whole notes in them. In a few weeks we will learn about the half note and start working on creating patterns using quarter, eighth, and half notes. However, I'm introducing a lot of these whole note songs because we do learn about whole notes in 2nd grade, as well, and all of them use half notes, so we'll be able to practice our half notes even without learning about the whole note.

Songs we are singing in 2nd Grade this week:
  • Au Claire de la Lune
  • Frere Jacques
  • Here Comes a Bluebird
  • My Father's House
  • Who's That Tapping at my Window

3rd Grade
In 3rd grade we are reviewing all the notes we already know. We are singing various songs that use half notes and whole notes since we just learned about these at the end of the year. I also love that some of these songs the 3rd graders already knew because they sing them so beautifully!

Songs we are singing in 3rd Grade this week:
  • Au Claire de la Lune
  • All Through the Night
  • Frere Jacques
  • Here Comes a Bluebird
  • The Water is Wide
  • My Father's House
  • Who's that Tapping at my Window

4th Grade & 5th Grade
4th & 5th graders just learned the Alabama Gal dance last week. It was a LOT of fun and students are hoping to be able to get to it this week, too. Because of that this will be the reward students earn if they are following directions and working hard in music class.

My 4th and 5th graders are at two different places. I have some classes that have already learned all about ti ta ti and other classes that have not. This is definitely a challenge, so the goal is to get all the classes on the same page and really understanding how to clap rhythms using ti ta ti.

To work on practicing ti ta ti rhythms I have been working on using the rhythm games provided at the end of my Alabama Gal and Shake the Papaya Down rhythm files:


Yesterday, I picked one student to come up and play the rhythm on rhythm sticks. The goal for all the other students was to decide if they did it correctly or incorrectly. Students did a pretty good job of this and even picked up on minor incorrect patterns. (For example: adding a slight rest in between patterns, giving one note not enough time or too much time) I was really proud of how respectful they all were and how no one had to feel bad if they clapped a rhythm incorrectly.

Once all my classes are ready to move on from working on ti ta ti we will begin to take a look at low so and low la patterns. (We started to work on this last year)

Songs we are singing in 4th Grade & 5th Grade this week:

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Wednesday, September 10, 2014

What's Happening Wednesday

I've decided to make a pact with myself and all of you that I will blog AT LEAST once a week. To make that happen, I'm devoting part of my Wednesday routine to writing a blog post.

This week is week 2 for me. (We normally start a little later here in Wisconsin.)

Here is a quick glimpse into my week:
Kindergarten
I'm still going through the music rules step by step in my classroom. I only see Kindergarten once a week at one of my schools and since I'm introducing one Rule Song a week, they won't be done with all the rules until October. It is a little sad to me that I don't get to see them all more often, but it is what it is! At my other school we are on to rule #3 and will be finishing rule #4 at the end of this week. (That is one stress of working in two different districts, it is sometimes very difficult to keep everyone on track or to remember where I am with different classes)

For my rules this year I'm using Lindsay Jervis's Rule Songs, as they came with her Owl Themed Rules. You can find them by clicking on the picture below:

Kindergarten is also beginning to work on keeping a steady beat and using their singing, whispering, and talking voices. I have not labeled any of these things yet, since it is only the second week of school, but we are starting to explore these concepts. For each song we sing students keep a beat in various ways and I often let students pick different ways of keeping the beat. We keep the beat slowly and quickly.

Songs we are singing in Kindergarten this week:

1st Grade
Now that we are in the second week of school we are reviewing some of the concepts we learned in Kindergarten to prepare for learning ta & ti-ti. I'm not yet labeling ta & ti-ti, but we are singing various songs that we will eventually learn ta & ti-ti with.

Songs we are singing in 1st Grade this week:

2nd Grade
In 2nd grade we are going to be reviewing ta & ti-ti and are currently preparing for ta-a. In order to do this I have picked out some songs that use ta, ti-ti, and ta-a. We will learn these songs and become comfortable singing them through a couple days of practice. When students are able to sing the songs on their own we will then begin to look at finding ta & ti-ti in the songs. Then later, we will work on figuring out our new note. My goal is to have introduced ta-a (and possibly ta-a-a-a) by November when we start working on our Christmas concert.

Since we are singing 2 French songs, I created a story to go along with introducing these songs by saying we were all going on a trip to France. Students had to find where France is on a map and we discussed how we would get there (plane, car, boat, etc.) This was a lot of fun. It is always great to incorporate a little bit of Social Studies into music class, as well as some global awareness.

Songs we are singing in 2nd Grade this week:

3rd Grade
Map
temp

As you can see my 3rd graders are doing similar things in music as my 2nd graders. We also looked at the map and found France. However, the reason I'm doing these songs in 3rd grade is to reinforce ta-a and ta-a-a-a. Some of my 3rd graders got to the assessment portion of half note, whole note, half rest, and whole rest, but another section didn't get to it. This will help review this concept for the classes that did assess it and prepare my other 3rd graders for assessing it.

Songs we are singing in 3rd Grade this week:

4th Grade & 5th Grade
My 4th & 5th graders ended the year after learning about ti ta ti and just beginning to look for low so and low la. I decided we would start with a couple ti ta ti songs that actually use low so and low la for added practice, since we weren't quite ready for the assessment at the end of 3rd grade. Shake the Papaya Down and Alabama Gal were two songs they learned last year that we are now reviewing ti ta ti with. When we seem comfortable with singing these songs and with the rhythm I'll start to work on the solfege for these concepts.

Along with singing my students began to learn the dance for Alabama Gal as a fun incentive for good behavior in music class. Both my 4th and 5th graders absolutely loved doing the dance yesterday, so it will be a great way to make sure we stay on task.

*NOTE: My 4th and 5th graders are around the same level because of when I started at these two schools. These classes aren't quite at the level where I would like them to be, but we are definitely getting closer every year.

Songs we are singing in 4th Grade & 5th Grade this week:

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