vacation!

Today is my last day of work before my first real “teacher” vacation! Of course, it’s nowhere near as lengthy as University breaks, but still, there’s a true excitement to it. I’m looking forward to seeing friends and family over the next 2 weeks, and getting some refreshment and renewal before it’s time to start again in January. So far, so good. Four months down in my first year as a music teacher, and I’m still alive!

Collaboration Christmas!

For most of the month of December, the phys. ed teacher and I will be collaborating on a dance/movement unit with our students. Our schedules work out so that one of us has an older grade when the other has a younger grade. I’ll be bringing my classes to the gym to work with her classes on dance and movement projects set to Christmas music. Two of the classes will be working on line dances, and the other two will be working on black light movement pieces. We’ll have black lights set up, the windows to the gym will be completely blacked out, and the lights will be turned off. The students will dress all in black, they will wear white gloves or hold white ribbon. The white will be the only thing you see.

Because my Christmas concert is already chock full of pieces from all of the different music classes, there (unfortunately!!!) is no time for us to allow the students to perform all of their dance/movement numbers in the concert. We decided that one group – the most outstanding group -  will have the chance to perform at the concert, and all of them will have the chance to perform at the traditional Christmas sing-a-long assembly on the last day of school before Christmas. This way, everyone will be (hopefully) committed to doing the best job they can, and everyone will have a chance to perform at least once.

This is not only a wonderful chance for the students to work with a group that they are not used to working with, but it encourages participation, team building, and leadership for the older students. Teaching is such a lonely profession – it will also give myself and the phys. ed teacher a chance to be around another adult during the day. We’re so excited to work together on this!

Halloween Sound Effect “Tableaus” using Audacity & free sound samples

We had a Halloween activity day for the whole school. I was in charge of a “music” station. For 5-7 minutes each, groups of 4-6 students would visit me and I had to find something fun, engaging, and QUICK!

We are slightly technology-challenged (as in lack of equipment) at my school, so I’ve seen it as my duty to start introducing a few new things to the students. Here is what I used:

• My personal laptop
• A 27″ external monitor (also could be done with LCD projector, but ours was in use so I made do with the monitor)
• A set of laptop speakers
• “Audacity” – a free audio recording program (get it here)
• A collection of free “halloween” sound samples that I downloaded onto my computer  – i.e. wind, rain, footsteps, thunder, screams, ghost sounds, howls, etc) (get them here)

I had the students sitting on mats around the monitor. Since we only had 5 minutes to complete the activity, I had prepared cards in advance with each sound effect written on them. I had 3 different types of footsteps, so they went on one colour card, and were each numbered, “F1″, “F2″, and “F3″. Those went into one pile. Then, on another colour card, I numbered my scream sound effects, “S1″, “S2″, etc. I did this with each type of sound effect I had downloaded specifically for this project.

I had each student in the group pick one sound effect, and that was the one I would use in their “tableau” (I should also mention that I had opened each of the sound effects that could potentially be used in one window so that as each student chose their sound effect for their group, I just located it in the first window, and then copied and pasted into “their” window.

Some sound effects we had lasting for the entire tableau  (about 15 seconds) – i.e. wind, rain, etc.

Other sound effects were used more sparingly – i.e. a scream, thunder crashing. In these cases, I would ask the students where they would like that particular effect located – at the beginning, middle, or end.

We ended up with some pretty cool sound effect scenes! And it actually worked for 5 minutes. If I had more time with the students, I would have them manipulating the sound samples themselves, adding effects, moving them around, etc. Now that they all have been introduced to the program and have seen how it works, I may be able to do this in a lab setting later on.

Here is one example of a grade 6 group’s finished product. I think they did a great job!