September in review…

My first month as a “real” teacher is almost over! I’ve been looking back at what we’ve accomplished in the past few weeks:

Grade One

The grade one classes have mainly been singing and playing games in music class – experiencing music as a source of enjoyment, moving within one’s own space, experiencing singing voice vs. speaking voice. We’ve also been learning the music room rules and routines, as well as getting to know one another with name games. Here are the things we have done:

• “Hello, There” from “Share the Music” is our daily call-response echo song
• Many action songs – i.e. “Teddy Bear,” “Let’s Make a Circle,” “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” etc. to get them singing. Often I’ll get them clapping their hands or patsching in time to the music to experience steady beat (we have not yet labelled the term, though).
• We’ve experienced high and low pitches using glockenspiels, and an extremely easy Orfesstration of “Itsy Bitsy Spider”
• We’ve talked about the classroom instruments, and have been introduced to several individual instruments. We used the song, “The Orchestra is Playing” to help identify different instruments and how they sound.
• We’ve learned how to stay in our own space, and move within our own space using a “Simon Says” – like game called, “Tony the Turtle.”

Grade Two

I’ve also spend significant time on singing and action games with my grade two students, we’ve reviewed classroom rules and routines, and played lots of name games.

• “Hello, There” is also our welcome song, just like the grade one classes.
• We began the year with a sound story I recieved from a colleage called, “The Princess, the Frog, and the Little Bird.” This story get the students doing sound effects with the story – first using their bodies and voices, and then with instruments. We talk a lot about how to make the sound effects more “real” by finding instruments that “fit” the desired effect. It’s basically an introduction to timbre, as well as introducing them to the proper holding position and playing technique of classroom instruments.
• We started reviewing soh-mi pitches as well. We used our bodies to show high and low pitches, we discovered melodies of familliar soh-mi songs using our bodies, and the boomwhackers. Soon I’ll be getting them to discover “lah”
• We’ve reviewed tah, ti-ti, and sah – reading the rhythms only at this point. I’ll get them writing them as well to review. Tah-ah and Sah-ah will also be introduced next month.

Grade Three

Again with the grade three students, we’ve been working on classroom rules and routines, name games, etc.

• “Hello, Everybody” is our daily welcome/warm-up song. It’s from “An Orff Mosaic from Canada” by Lois Birkenshaw-Fleming. This book is full of fun songs and poems as well as Ofesstrations that are easy to teach, and the students really enjoy them. We sang this song for the first few weeks of class, and also worked on a 3-part Orfesstration to accompany it.
• I read them the story, “Morimer” by Robert Munsch . They LOVE this story. We learned Mortimer’s song, discovered soh and mi in it. We also worked on high/low pitches using the recurring “thumps” up and down the stairs in the story. We discovered which classroom instruments could change pitches and which could not. We used the Boomwhackers to discover lowest to highest and vice versa. They loved being “detectives” to get the mixed-up Boomwhackers back in the proper order!
• We did lots of review on tah, ti-ti, sah, and tah-ah. We’ll be reviewing the rest of the grade two rhythms in the weeks to come before I start introducing any new grade three rhythms.

Grade Four

In my upper grade music classes (grades four, five, and six), I started the first day of school the same way for each class. I put together a mixed CD of various styles and genres of music that I like to listen to. No two pieces of music on that CD were anything alike! Before I played the CD for the students, I handed them a sheet of paper. Then, I proceeded to play the first 30 seconds of each piece of music on the CD. The students’ jobs were to write down their immediate reactions to each track – did they love it, hate it, think it was boring, etc. They LOVED this activity. It opened up a discussion about all the different music they would be exposed to over the year, and that it was ok not to like something.  I’m trying to get them into critical thinking stages. If they tell me they don’t like something – I’m going to ask why!

In grade four so far, we have worked on:

• “Mama Paquita” from “An Orff Mosaic from Canada” – a lively Jamaican-style melody with a 3-part Orfesstration. This was a little hard for them. I think I will take it out again later in the year, because they so enjoyed it, but the rhythms are a little complex and hard to get the ostinatoes together.
• Good singing – breathing, posture, tone production, etc
• Proper use of classroom instruments (especially the xylophones, metallophones etc – how to sit, how to play, change bars, mallet position, etc)
• Rhythm focus – we’re reviewing all grades 1-3 rhythms so we can be ready for the introduction of my “Rhythm Drills” incentive program that will begin next month. More on that later!

Grade Five

I began the grade five classes with the listening exercise as described above. I’m doing a portfolio project with the grade five and six classes this year. In the portfolios will be a myriad of things from the entire year in music class – theory notes and assignments, a world map with locations of songs we study maked in on it, composer/music history lessons, listening logs, etc. Their first assignment for the portfolio was an extension of the first day activity. They had to write me a short paragraph about what music they liked and why they liked it. I stressed the “why you like it” part over and over, and still a fair number of them did not include any justification as to why they liked the music they liked. Some students went above and beyond the writing – I had several students create CD’s of their favourite music for me, some were extremely artistic and created collages and posters, one student did a dramatic recitation, and one student even made a video!

In grade five, we have worked on:

• Proper use of Orff instruments (sitting position, mallet position, bar removal, etc)
• We began a game that I learned from one of my former student teaching supervisors called, “Maestro’s Obstacle Course.” It’s a game that really enforces timbre – and it’s fun, too! I have a music word wall in my classroom, and “timbre” was the first word up there for the grade five classes.
• We’ve also done some serious theory/rhythm review

Grade Six

Grade six classes are also doing a portfolio project as described above. They also completed the first-day listening exercise and the extension activity. I find grade six the hardest to teach out of all the elementary grades. The jr. high mentality sets in early, and I get this, “too cool for school” attitude coming off of most of them. I’m trying to keep music class engaging and developmentally appropriate!

In grade six, we are working on:

• critical thinking skills
• Listening logs
• Proper use of classroom instruments
• Proper singing
• Rhythm review
• We also worked on a 4-part Orfesstration to, “Green Sally Up” from Denise Gagne’s “The Orff Source” which they had a lot of fun with.

This month has gone by so quickly – I can hardly believe that we’ve covered all of this material in only these few weeks!