2016 Bainbridge Carol Sing

This year Bainbridge Elementary has an ocean theme and as in years past, our 3rd graders made use of the school theme to share a holiday message during our annual Carol Sing.  This year I borrowed the text for our play from a picture book, something that I have not done before.

Act 1 of our Carol Sing was based on Deborah Diesen's book The Pout Pout Fish, a story about a glum fish who learns that he has the power inside himself to change how he feels.  Mrs. Stough's 3rd Grade Class opened the first act with the song My Friends in the Sea by Teresa Jennings.

Readers from Mrs. Stough's Class and Mrs. Hartranft's Class read The Pout Pout Fish in reader's theater style.  As the audience was introduced to the main character, Mr. Fish, Mrs. Stough's class performed a song with music written by myself and text taken from the story book.

All students learned the main Pout Pout Fish Song melody on orff instruments (xylophones).  We then added harmony parts on boomwhackers.  Students were selected to play the two different parts and then we rounded out the arrangement with a glockenspiel harmony, rain stick, ocean drum and cabasa.  Some students chose to focus on just singing the text.

Mrs. Stough's Class closed the first act with another Teresa Jenning's song: I'd Rather Be Happy.

Bainbridge students, faculty, staff and about 60 community members participated in a Christmas carol sing-a-long that acted as our intermission, before Mrs. Hartranft's Class took the stage.   Act 2 opened with Teresa Jenning's song Holiday of Music.
 

Next students from Mrs. Stough's class dramtically read  Deborah Diesen's book The Not Very Merry Pout Pout Fish.  In this story, Mr. Fish tries to find the perfect gift for his new found friends.  In the end he is encouraged to make is own gifts.

Much like Mrs. Stough's Class, Mrs. Hartranft's class first learned the melody to the song on orff instruments as an entire class.  We then added a bass metalophone ostinato and boomwhacker harmony and rounded out the arrangement with a glockenspiel harmony and finger cymbals.  The carol sing closed with song by Paul and Teresa Jennings called Reason for the Season.

Congratulations to both 3rd grade classes for the hard work they put in to our successful performance of "A Season with Mr. Fish."  A special 'thank you' goes out to our Carol Sing readers.  All 19 students volunteered their time during several lunch recesses to practice their parts.

Musical Pen Pals 2

The 2nd and 3rd grade students at Mill Road and Bainbridge were very excited to get their first video from our Musical Pen Pals at Donegal Primary School (DPS).  The first graders at DPS shared the song "Bingo" with Boomwhackers®.  My students enjoyed seeing students from another school and learning a new way to perform a familiar song.  The video also gave us a chance to discuss what makes a successful performance.

This week Mrs. Nein's 2nd Grade class at Mill Road finished their first pen pal video.  2nd Graders recently added the half note to their rhythmic knowledge.  The song "Deedle Deedle Dumpling" (Lois Choksy's Kodaly Method 1, pg. 204) was a great song to highlight this rhythm.  

  After learning the song, the students learned two different ostinati with body percussion.  They then transferred the harmonies to rhythm sticks and orff instruments.  After practicing the three parts, the students recorded their performance and discussed ways to improve their singing and instrument playing.  Below is the video we sent to our Musical Pen Pals at DPS.

AOSA National Conference

This past week I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the American Orff Schulwerk Association National Conference in Atlantic City, NJ.  Read more about the Orff Schulwerk aproach here.  With over 800 people in attendance, I had the opportunity to visit with old friends, meet other like-minded educators from across the country and sit among some of the nation's most well respected clinicians and music educators.

The theme of the conference was "Sailing the Seven C's", a play on words that referenced the ocean locale and 21st Century Skill's 4 C's (read about it here).  In addition to the 4 C's of 21st Century skills (Communication, Creativity, Collaboration and Critical Thinking), the conference added Community, Culture and Connections to round out the seven.

Over the next several posts I will be sharing some highlights from my trip.  In a nut shell, here is how my trip was impacted by the "Seven C's":

Communication:

 One of my favorite sessions was on a topic called "Responsive Classroom," a classroom management technique that has been around for several decades, but is starting to build steam in the educational world.  Matthew Stensrud, presenter and book collaborator, demonstrated the power of non-verbal communication in a responsive classroom setting through interactive modeling.

Creativity:

Another favorite session of mine was on the topic of Dalcroze-Eurythmics.  In this session we split into groups and used creative movement to tell a story.  It was neat to see the similarities and differences in how each group told the same story through movement.

Collaboration:

In a session on musical modes, we split into groups to create a musical arrangement and movement for different songs.  The songs were then performed during different parts of a story.  Our group had to work together by first deciding who would be singers, xylophone and recorder players and dancers and then creating our arrangement and movement piece.  

Critical Thinking:

 One key aspect of teaching from the Orff Schulwerk approach is something we often call "processing."  In other words, scaffolding a lesson to make it more meaningful and easier to achieve high levels of musicality in a short amount of time.  Many sessions demonstrated techniques and ways of thinking through the process to make our music more accessible to the students.  When music is accessible, students are more likely to make their own connections and start thinking more critically about how to make their performance of a higher quality.

Culture:

 Music is a wonderful way to make cultural connections.  Sessions from Scandinavian Dances to African drumming were offered throughout the week.  In particular, World Drumming sessions highlighted how cultural music can begin to change the "culture" of a school or classroom by teaching respect and team building.

Connections:

The connections I made during this conference were invaluable!  Not only did I get to renew some connections from my Orff levels courses, I was able to sit among music educators that influence my teaching on a daily basis.  

I danced with Peter and Mary Alice Amidon, whose folk dancing and singing game books are used across our district. I'm Growing Up is a new favorite of mine and budget item from this past year.

I interacted with Dr. Wendy Valerio and Dr. Butch Marshal, both former students of Edwin Gordon (read about him here), who shared more ideas from the book Music Play, which I use in many of my preschool and kindergarten lessons.

Roger Sams and Beth Ann Hepburn, authors of the Purposeful Pathways series, presented several sessions demonstrating expert processing and differentiation techniques.  (I won this book and several percussion instruments in a silent auction and can't wait to start using it!)

Community:

 One of my favorite moments of the conference was on our final day when the Vienna Jammers, a percussion ensemble from Vienna, VA comprised of students ages 8-15 years old, performed in the lobby area of the conference center.  People lined the four floors of the conference center balcony areas to watch this awesome group as their music echoed through the building.  It was touching to see some of our nation's greatest educators standing in awe and being inspired by these young children.

Thank you to PMEA and the Margaret S. Bauer Grant for providing funding for me to attend, learn and grow!

Musical Pen Pals

The 2nd and 3rd grade students at Mill Road and Bainbridge were very excited to get their first video from our Musical Pen Pals at Donegal Primary School (DPS).  The first graders at DPS shared the song "Bingo" with Boomwhackers®.  My students enjoyed seeing students from another school and learning a new way to perform a familiar song.  The video also gave us a chance to discuss what makes a successful performance.

This week Mrs. Nein's 2nd Grade class at Mill Road finished their first pen pal video.  2nd Graders recently added the half note to their rhythmic knowledge.  The song "Deedle Deedle Dumpling" (Lois Choksy's Kodaly Method 1, pg. 204) was a great song to highlight this rhythm.  

  After learning the song, the students learned two different ostinati with body percussion.  They then transferred the harmonies to rhythm sticks and orff instruments.  After practicing the three parts, the students recorded their performance and discussed ways to improve their singing and instrument playing.  Below is the video we sent to our Musical Pen Pals at DPS.

Beginning of the year Orff experiences for 3rd grade

In 3rd grade, the students first learned body percussion and the words to a song.  We then learned how to play it on the Orff instruments.  

 Here is Mrs. Burkett's 3rd grade class from Mill Road performing the body percussion and singing "Let's Sing a Song" (Music For Children Vol. I, Canon #1 on pg. 91 modified for 2 at an instrument, lyrics by Nichole Witman). 

Here is Mrs. Tuell's 3rd grade class performing "Let's Sing a Song" on the Orff instruments.

Check out my other blog posts for videos from other grades!

Beginning of the year Orff experiences for 2nd grade

In 2nd grade we read the book Up, Down, and Around by Kathrine Ayres.  2nd grade also practiced upward and downward contour on the Orff instruments like the 1st graders, but these students focused on scale patterns and alternating their sticking.  Here is Miss Antrim's class with part of their book performance:

Check out other blog posts for more videos of the students from other grades playing the Orff instruments.

Beginning of the year Orff experiences for 1st grade

This past week all of my students started learning how to use our Orff instruments. In 1st grade the Orff Instruments were turned into trees (Thanks for the idea Sarah Patek Farrell!) and the students made their mallets go up and down the tree to the song "Let Us Chase the Squirrel". 

Here is Ms. Jenakovich's 1st Grade class playing "Let us Chase the Squirrel":

Check out other blog posts for videos of the other grades!

The wonderful world of Orff!

This past summer I completed a goal that I have had since starting teaching.  I finished my Orff Levels and am now a certified Orff teacher!  It was great to be back in the classroom this summer as a student instead of a teacher!  Last year I posted about several different music teaching methods and Orff Schulwerk is another well known approach in the world of music education.

As I mentioned in an early post, my main approach for teaching is through the Kodaly Method, which is absolutely wonderful for teaching music literacy.  However, I have been noticing that while my students are very knowledgeable, they were having a hard time applying what they know in a musical way and struggle to be independent creators.  By integrating Orff Schulwerk with the Kodaly method, I am able to help my students become musically literate and also perform and create musically.

Orff Schulwerk was developed by Carl Orff, a German composer most known for his cantata "Carmina Burana", and Gunild Keetman, a German educator.  This method promotes musicality through the use of music, movement, speech and drama.

The American Orff Schulwerk Association (AOSA) website describes Orff Schulwerk as "A Teaching Model For Optimal Learning," explaining that "Imitation, experimentation and personal expression occur naturally as the students become confident, life-long musicians and creative problem solvers."  For those of you who read my last post, that's 21st century skills at it's finest!

AOSA website

I am very excited to be integrating more Orff based ideas and activities into my teaching.  In November I will be attending the AOSA National Conference in Atlantic City to learn and grow more in the Orff approach.

 Check out my next post with lots of videos showing how we used our Orff instruments during the 2nd week of school.

 

21st Century Skills: The 4 C's

21st century skills have become the hot topic in the world of education.  The Elizabethtown Area School District, in particular, has put a much bigger emphasis this school year on the importance of 21st century skills to the future of our students.  When most people hear "21st century skills" their immediate thought goes to technology, however, they are much more than that!  As an educator, my main task is to prepare students to become productive members of the community.  With technology and information changing at such a fast pace, how can I ready students for jobs that may not even exist yet?  21st century skills are identified as essential skills for any job, even those that we can't imagine!

In my classroom, I focus on what is known as the "4 C's": Communication, Collaboration, Creativity and Critical Thinking.  As a music educator, these skills show up in many of the activities that we do on a daily basis in music class.  

Take, for example, an activity that we did during 3rd grade music class last week.  It was the first time I had seen the kids this school year, so I planned to do a few team building games to get to know them.  One activity focused on learning each others' names and using two of the 4 C's: Creativity and Critical Thinking (problem solving).  I had the students say their name as they went around the circle, but they were challenged to come up with a unique way to say their name (i.e. high vs. low, fast vs. slow, etc...).  This activity also reviewed the idea of question/answer form.  I was the question asking "What's your name?" and the students gave their name as the answer.   

After they shared their unique sounding names, they were then challenged to create movement or body percussion that matched their name.  I gave them few instructions and allowed the students to time to experiment.  After we performed our name and motion we talked about how some names matched better because you could hear or see the syllables in the motions or because they followed the contour of their voice.  

Student were encouraged to "edit" their responses if they wanted to and we performed our names one final time.  This time, we only performed the movement portion of our name.  Without the ability to use our voice, the students honed their communication and listening skills as they waited for their turn. 

Here is Mrs. Stough's class from Bainbridge Elementary performing their version of "What's your Name?":

Thanks to Susan Riley, Founder of Educationcloset.com for the great name game idea! This was a quick activity, but there were so many lessons that we could learn from it!

Move it!

Movement education:  Sound's like a Phys. Ed. topic and not something to be studied in music class.  Right?  What if I told you that in some cultures, 'music' and 'dance' are not separate terms.  They simply exist as one and the same.

 So why is movement so important to music?  Other than the fact that research proves that the use of gross motor movement activates the brain in a way that makes learning become more deeply embedded in your memory, movement can also facilitate a deeper understanding of how musical concepts work and are used.  Those tiny black dots on the paper that we read and call 'music' is nothing more than script until our muscles literally breathe life into them by singing or playing an instrument.

Can you tell I'm passionate about this subject?  It may come as a surprise to some that I am a teacher and musician by trade, but my real passion is movement!  I love dance and always have.  In fact I still take regular ballet classes, which have become very therapeutic to my soul!  While some people have been known to see certain colors when they hear music, I see movement and dance.  My brain is continuously choreographing what it hears to the point that I just have to move to the music!

Some of my earliest teaching experiences were teaching others to dance as a choreographer for show choirs and musicals during my high school career.  Not to mention the performances I would put on in the living room with my best friend and reluctant brothers when I was in elementary school!  While I have no degree in movement or dance education, several of my undergrad and graduate courses have focused on dance education, including a dance pedagogy class (one of my favorites as an undergraduate) and movement classes that were included in my Orff-Schulwerk levels, which I just completed this summer.

In my music classes we move just about as much as we sing! We use movement as our transitions from one activity to another.  We dance to folk songs to feel how meter and form play a role in how music is constructed.  We practice rhythms using body percussion and other gross motor movements before performing them on instruments that require fine motor control and an understanding of multiple musical concepts.  Because movement is so important to me and to the education of my students, I have decided that one of my focuses this year would be to integrate as much movement into my lessons as I can.  To kick it off, a new word wall has been installed in both of my classrooms.

 While I won't be assessing the students on their movement ability, this word wall will provide some opportunities for connections across curricula and serve as idea starters during our creative movement activities.

If you are interested in learning more about dance education or reading some of the research that influences my teaching, please continue exploring the links below:

Music, Movement and Learning by Carlos Abril

The Elements of Dance

Laban Movement (Brief Overview)

Dalcroze Eurhythmics (Official site)

Welcome Back!

Welcome back to another great school year!  I am so excited to start helping kids fill their minds and bodies with music and movement!  I will be using this blog to provide updates about what we are doing in the classroom (including pictures and videos), important dates and performances, and to share some topics that hold a special interest to me and influence my teaching.

Please check back often to stay up to date and connected.  You can subscribe to this blog by entering your email address on the link in the upper right hand corner of this page.  Once you subscribe, you will receive an email anytime this page is updated.  You can also follow me on Twitter (Mrs. Witman, @MrsWitmanMusic).

For parents interested in other things like schedules, pictures of the classroom, curriculum and community links, please visit my EASD district classroom website.  Here is a link:

Mrs. Witman's EASD Classroom website 

As always, please feel free to contact me at anytime!  I'd love to hear your feedback or work with you to make your child's music education the best it can be. You can email me at nichole_witman@etownschools.org.

WARNING: Post may contain some "horn tooting"

For those of you that follow my Blog, you may have also been following the development of my community initiative for the preschool music program I called Up Beat!, which is now coming to a close for the 2015-16 school year.  I have thoroughly enjoyed working with the children that participated in the program and have gained a wealth of knowledge about early childhood development and education through my preparation for our sessions and from the interactions I've had with the kids.  Here is an earlier post about the goals of the program: click here

I don't usually toot my own horn (unless it's during a tuba lesson ;) ), but I'm very humbled to share that I was awarded with the EASD Teacher Recognition for Community Service for my work with the preschool music program.  You can read about it here.  I couldn't have earned this award without two very supportive principals (Thank you so much Mrs. Brewer and Mr. Kiehl!) and EASD administration, as well as the participation of the children and families who spend a 1/2 hour with me every Tuesday.  Needless to say, I am very excited to see where this program will go in the future!

Speaking of the future, in order to plan for next year, I have created a survey to gather information about scheduling, likes and dislikes, and about the community that the program serves.  The survey is designed for participants as well as families of children who may be interested in participating during the 2016-17 school year.  Even if you are not eligible for the program, please pass this blog post on to those you know who would benefit and live in the EASD school district.  Please spread the word to help our program grow!

Click here to take the survey

I hope to see lots of old and new faces when we start Up Beat! in the fall!

It's Concert Season!

Has your child ever wondered what it would be like to perform with a choir, orchestra or band?  Maybe he or she already plays an instrument or sings in a community choir? Or maybe you or another family member play or sing at home or in a community group?

Even if you don't participate in music at home, there are many wonderful ways to expose your child to music and most of the time its FREE!  This summer many communities will sponsor free "concerts in the park" series that feature local musical groups of various genres.

But why wait until summer?  The Etown School District has just started spring concert season.  Students in 4th-12th grades will be demonstrating what they have learned this year through several band, choral and orchestral concerts and they are always FREE to the public!

Below is a schedule of upcoming concerts.  All concerts begin at 7:00pm.

April 14  High School Band Concert

May 3  Bear Creek Orchestra Concert

May 12  Bear Creek Choral Concert

May 13 MS/HS Orchestra Concert

May 16 Middle School Band Concert

May 23 MS/HS Choral Concert

May 24 Bear Creek Band Concert

Next year, our current 3rd graders will have the opportunity to select an instrument and join the chorus.  What a wonderful opportunity the above concerts provide as a conversation starter for you and your child about their musical interests! 

Using Children's Literature to Prepare and Practice Music

Below are the handouts from my PMEA Annual Conference session.  Enjoy!

Witman Session Handout

Witman Bibliography

Music In Our Schools

March is known in the music world as "Music In Our Schools Month (MIOSM) ".  Started in 1975 by the Music Educator's National Conference (MENC), MIOSM has grown from a single day celebrating music in education, to an entire month.  MIOSM advocates for music education in all schools and there are many special events, such as a nationwide concert and advocacy days at state and federal government building, that help us celebrate that fact.

This year MIOSM's nationwide theme is "Music Inspires."  At Mill Road and Bainbridge Elementary school, we recreated the logo by having each student in the building put their name on a leaf to add to our tree.

Adults in the building were encouraged to join our celebration by putting their name on a blue bird.  Many of the teachers really got into decorating their birds!

I loved the students' reaction after the tree was completed!  Many of them were in awe of the tree and wanted to find their name.  Having their name on the tree represents something very important that all children yearn for:  a sense of belonging.  Everyone deserves to have musical experiences and it is my hope that my students feel just as much included in our music classroom as they do seeing their name on our tree.  Music certainly has inspired many things for me.  What has music inspired for you?

The Playground Connection

This past week 2nd grade learned a new game called "Hot potato, Pass it on".  I recently learned this from a website called Active Music Digital.  Instead of passing the "hot potato" as quickly as they can, the students learned that to play the game properly, they needed to bounce the ball to the metric beat (beginning of each measure in the song).  I love this game for many reasons:

1. ASSESSMENT:

I was able to assess if students do or do not feel the metric beat.  In first grade, we spend a lot of time understanding how to perform a steady beat, which does not come naturally to some students.  However, 2nd graders start to understand that steady beats are grouped and we can perform several different steady beats (micro beats: the subdivision of the beat; macro beats: the beat; and metric beats: the beginning of each measure or group of notes.)  I was surprised how many of my good steady beaters were having trouble finding the metric beat in our song, while for others it came as naturally as walking.  This formative assessment allowed me to gauge my student's progress and make changes to my upcoming lessons to accommodate the students who need more practice in this area.

2. SINGING:

The students enjoyed singing the song, even if we sang it 20 times in a row!  They loved it, everyone participated without reminders and everyone was singing with energy!

3. SOCIAL LESSONS:

While students got "out" during the game, it was not based on skill.  Getting out was simply based on chance.  Students learned that getting out may be undesirable, but it was part of the game.  This is a life lesson that children need to practice in order to understand how to control their feelings in similar situations in the future.

 

My favorite moment while teaching and playing this game was when one of my students said, "Hey!  We could play this on the playground!"  It is surprising how novel that concept is to the students.  Children learn first through play and yet there has become this disconnect between what we learn in the classroom and what we do outside of the classroom.  

Time outside the classroom, whether it be on the playground, at home, or in the comings and goings of our daily lives, should be time for students to practice what they are learning in school.  For my 2nd graders, taking the "Hot Potato" song to the playground is a great way to practice finding the meter of a song.  What they don't realize is that they can do this with any song that they know!

Parents can cultivate the idea of bringing school learning into daily life by modeling ways that children can take the concepts they are learning and applying it to a real situation.  If your child is learning addition skills, simply turn an everyday routine into an addition sentence (ex. You put one plate on the table and we have 3 more plates to set.  How many plates do we have altogether?).  Children become more comfortable with asking questions and excited about learning if the adults in their life model it for them.

Up Beat Learning

The Up Beat! preschool music program is in full swing!  So far we have had two energizing sessions with 20 children taking part in at least one of the sessions.  To prepare for my preschool lessons, I have been reading into Edwin Gordon's Music Learning Theory (read about it here).  In particular, I am using many ideas from Gordon's early childhood music curriculum: Music Play.

Aside from moving, chanting and singing in several different meters and modes, I have also incorporated at least one song-based picture book into the lesson. I try to model ways that the parents can do the same at home.

The first week we read The Ants Go Marching by illustrator Jeffrey Scherer.  Musically, this was a great book to work on steady beat and singing a song that is in minor and 6/8 meter.  Better still is the fact that we were able to pause to cumulatively count from 1 to 10 on each page.  The children not only practiced counting, but also made connections between the name of the number and what the number looks like in print, as well as one-to-one correspondence in the pictures.  After doing things like this at home with my son, he is now almost able to count to 10 on his own and is even recognizing numbers in print at only 20 months old!

The first book we read this week was Winter Wonderland by illustrator Jacqueline Rogers.  I had intended on using this song the week prior, but we had to cancel our session due to our own winter wonderland!  I loved pausing during the song to make connections to things like weather.  The children shared things they see during the winter time and we talked about what they like to do in the snow.

The second book we sang this week was If You're Happy and You Know It by illustrator Jane Cabrera.  I love this book because the kids already know the song and can interact with movements and sounds that are described in the lyrics.  It's a great way to help the kids recognize patterns (i.e. clapping 2 times after I sing "clap your hands").  At the end of the book is a picture of all of the animals from the previous pages.  We took some time to discuss the characters in the book by naming the types of animals.  Next week we will use this song and sing it with feelings.  The children will share different types of feelings and things that you do when you feel that way (i.e. happy = smile, sad = cry, sleepy = yawn, etc...).

For those of you interested in song-based pictures books, Jane Cabrera has a collection of really great ones!  The other two books I mentioned are from Scholastic's Sing and Read Storybooks.  Again, there are a lot of really great song-based picture books from Scholastic.  Some even come with sing-a-long CDs.

Up Beat!

For the past few months I have been working on putting together a preschool music program and now I am very excited to announce that my program "Up Beat!" will become a reality starting in February!

Up Beat! is a preschool music program for children of the Elizabethtown Area School District, ages 3-5 (not enrolled in kindergarten) and their parents.

The current session of Up Beat! will meet in the music room at Mill Road Elementary School on Tuesdays from 3:00-3:30 for the months of February through May 2016.

What is Up Beat!?

In music, an "up beat," or anacrusis, is the unaccented beat before an accented beat or "down beat."  The term "up beat" was chosen as the name for our preschool music program, because I feel that the key to successful students is starting their education before formal education starts in kindergarten, and building connections between home and school educational efforts.  It is also the goal of Up Beat! to create a joyful and up beat learning experience.  Children who have joyful learning experiences are more likely to engage in learning in the future.

"Ana-crucial" Elements of Up Beat!:

 Below is a list of "ana-crucial" elements that Up Beat! will focus on.  The word "ana-crucial" is a play on the words anacrusis and crucial, meaning that these elements are necessary for the development of young learners before they enter formal education.

1. Exposure: There is a lot of research that has been done on how we learn.  Most findings boil down to exposure!  You can't learn it if you aren't exposed to it.  The more you are exposed to something that you need to learn, the easier it will be for you to retain the information and apply it in new situations.  By exposing children to music concepts and other core concepts at a young age, they will be more equipped to make connections to their experiences and learn new concepts in the future.  Up Beat! strives to expose children at a young age to the arts and core subjects.

2. Engagement: In order for a child to become a life-long learner, engagement is key.  If a child is not engaged, he may not want to learn or may not make the deep connections necessary for him to be able to apply his learning in new situations.  However, it is also imperative for parents and guardians, the child's first teachers, to be engaged in the child's learning as well.  Up Beat! strives to build connections between home and school education by engaging the parents and child in the educational process.

3. Exploration: Children often first begin to learn by exploring the world around them through imaginative play and games.  Exploration often leads to opportunities for children to apply their learning in new situations.  Up Beat! provides a safe environment for children to explore their world through imaginative play, movement, songs and games.

Space for Up Beat! is limited and will be granted on a first come, first served basis.  

Please register today!

 To register please, contact me by email (nichole_witman@etownschools.org).

Melodic dictation in 1st grade

In 1st grade general music, one of the biggest priorities is to teach a solid foundation in rhythmic and melodic literacy.  However, as many elementary music educators may agree, rhythm often holds a higher priority than melody when teaching students how to read music.  There are many reasons why rhythm should hold a higher priority: it's the frame work from which we hang melodies from; music needs rhythm, but not all music needs a melody; and, frankly, it is more concrete and therefore easier to teach to young minds!

With that being said, I have a plethora of rhythmic games and strategies that I use with the students and I try to make sure we do some rhythmic sight reading and other rhythmic work in every music class.  I also try to have some melodic work as well, but I've noticed that I have less games and strategies for teaching melody.  I'm trying to push myself to include more melodic decoding and dictation activities into my lessons so students become just as comfortable with their melodic literacy as they are with their rhythmic literacy.

  When we first labeled melodic sounds, we started with the terms "high" and "low."  The students became comfortable with distinguishing between high and low sounds by comparing the two different sounds and labeling what they heard.  Later we renamed the sounds sol (high) and mi (low) and discussed how it was important to rename them, because in music we don't just have one high sound and one low sound.

One way that we decode and dictate melody is by using a staff and bingo chips as the tones.  1st grade is currently working with a two line staff (one line for sol and one line for mi).  Here are a few pictures of the 1st graders dictating some familiar melodies:

"Teddy Bear Teddy Bear" -- from the song Teddy Bear Teddy Bear Turn around

"Have the wish I wish tonight"--from the song Star Light Star Bright

 

We used "scaffolding" by first doing this activity as a class, then in pairs, before trying it individually.

One strategy for decoding the melody was to clap the phrase using high clapping for sol and a low clapping for mi.

The students took turns pointing to the dots as they sang the song to check their answer.

This week we will follow up this activity with a melody recognition and matching game on our interactive board.  Students will be assessed on their ability to hear sol and mi melodies with a formal assessment in 2 weeks by telling me if the melody they see matches the melody they hear.

Super Hero Holiday

On December 21st, the 3rd graders at Bainbridge Elementary helped to lead the school in our annual Carol Sing.  This year Bainbridge Elementary has a super hero theme, so for our Carol Sing, I wrote an original script to play on the super hero theme.  

"Super Hero Holiday" tells the story of Santa and Mrs. Claus before they became the traditional characters that we think of today.  In the beginning, Santa was 'Super Santa' and Mrs. Claus was 'Captain Claus', super heroes who's mission it was to save the world's toys from destruction!  Super Santa soon realizes that the two super heroes have been fixing the toys of naughty children who do not take care of them and, in fact, there were nice children who did not have any toys at all.  Super Santa and Captain Claus decide to change their mission and deliver toys to the nice children of the world instead.  After changing their focus, they realized that they will not be able to complete the mission alone.  With each obstacle, they add more super heroes to their team (the reindeer) until they are able to complete their mission of delivering toys to the nice children of the world.

25 students volunteered their time during several lunch recesses to practice dramatically reading the script.  Both 3rd grade classes learned 2 songs each, which were sung throughout the dramatic reading and the whole school participated in our sing-a-long intermission.  This year we had over 75 parents and community members in attendance.

Miss Richter's class opened the program with the song "North Pole Rock 'n' Roll" by Teresa Jennings.  

Miss Richter's class also learned an interlude on the orff instruments (xylophones) that I wrote for them.  After several sessions of practice, four students were selected to play the interlude every time a new super hero was introduced in the story.

Finally, Miss Richter's class performed "Teamwork" by John Riggio as Captain Claus is trying to convince Super Santa to add more team members to complete their mission.

 

After the whole school sing-a-long, Mrs. Stough's Class took the stage.  They performed  "Santa Claus is on His Way" by Teresa Jennings.  Several students were selected to play the BoomWhackers.

Mrs. Stough's Class closed the show with "A Super Celebration" by Teresa Jennings.

 A big 'Thank You' to Miss Antrim for being our Videographer!