This was a short week due to Monday's day off. Here's what we were up to in music:
The first graders learned a new song this week called "Apple Tree" to celebrate the autumn season. One student was the apple tree, and the other students held hands as they walked past him/her. At the end of the song, each apple tree dropped a folded bandanna (the apple) onto the head of one of the students! That student became the new apple tree, and the song was sung again! They also sang a song story in minor tonality called "Oh My."
The second graders extended their activity with the song "I'm a Nut" by adding instruments (rhythm sticks) and composing new verses. Below are some of the lyrics they came up with:
- I'm an acorn small and great, lying on a baby crate
- I'm an acorn small and smelly, lying in my daddy's belly
- I'm an acorn small and cool, lying in a swimming pool
- I'm an acorn small and green, lying in a tambourine
Please visit THIS BLOG POST to watch videos of some of the students singing their verses!
The third grade students filled in a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast two different pieces by Beethoven: Sonata in G and Moonlight Sonata. We asked them to focus on the mood, tempo, dynamics, rhythm, pitch, tonality, instrumentation, and anything else that they could think of. Of course, some students may interpret the two pieces differently, and that's okay! However, some qualities (such as instrumentation and tonality), are concrete and not open for interpretation.
They also played a game called "Dipidu," and learned a Halloween song to practice sixteenth notes (du ta de ta). We will continue these next week!
The fourth graders started a new folk dance called "Bridge of Athlone." They first found Ireland on the map, then talked about the history of that famous bridge. We listened to an Irish folk song, and the music was very familiar to one of our students...Madeline does Irish step dancing, so we asked her to perform a bit for us!
The students will be learning how to do the folk dance (not the step dance!) next week in class. They also continued to prepare for our Veteran's Day assembly.
The fifth grade students loved the Bridge of Athlone dance from last year SO much, that we did it again this year! They remembered it quite well, so it was easy to review. I decided to film Mr. Rabazzi's class...however we encountered a bit of an issue when the carpet slipped and knocked over the iPad!
Haha! I was so impressed how they were able to recover and keep dancing. We did film it once more, and it was a little less chaotic this time:
After the bridge dance, they started to learn a piece called "Halloween Night." We discussed the song's tonality (minor), and reviewed how to read a musical score. They had just enough time to learn two different xylophone parts, and we will continue playing next week.
In chorus, the students tried to sing "Celebrations Around the World" from memory. We still need to clean up those verses! Then they worked on their grade level pieces. 4th and 5th grade students also started a new African song called "Sing Noel."
We hope you have a wonderful week!
Hello everyone. My name is Olga and I'm from Russia
ReplyDeleteAt the moment I'm in the process of writing my master's thesis on the use of blogs in education.
Could you help me a little? Just answer the question here in the comments. Who do you consider the best singer, composer, songwriter of all time?
It can be one person or several people. I will be very grateful for your help.
Beams of goodness all around, as we say in Russia.