Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween to all of my students and readers!  To get into the spirit this week, my 1st graders read the story The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams and Illustrated by Megan Lloyd.  This is a favorite activity among many music teachers that I know, but not all of my music colleagues may realize just how many ELA connections they make with this 10 minute activity.

Today the students learned that when I was in elementary school, the Illustrator, Megan Lloyd, came to my school!  I got to meet her and even had her sign a book that she illustrated.  We quickly reviewed the difference between an author and an illustrator, which is a Foundational Skill in the PA State ELA Standards.

In the story, the little old Lady goes for a walk in the woods and meets various pieces of clothing.  Each piece of clothing makes a different sound, like the shoes who go "Stomp, Stomp" and we assigned different instruments to each sound.  For example, the shoes were played by the woodblocks.  By giving a summary of the story before we read it, I modeled another ELA skill that students will develop in their elementary classes: summarizing.

Finally, I read the book and the students listened for their piece of clothing to be mentioned.  ELA standards also focus on listening as an important skill to develop.  By giving the students the responsibility of playing their instrument when their assigned sound was mentioned in the book, the students were building their listening skills.  

Many students started anticipating when they should play their instrument because they recognized patterns in the author's writing.  In particular, the sounds were cumulative, meaning that each time they appeared in the book we started with the first and add one more to the list of sounds.  The students were also able to anticipate when the instruments would play because there were repetitive phrase patterns in the book. 

Finding patterns in music class is a skill that we are always working on and discussing, even if it is not being done with an actual book. One pattern that we are currently working on in 1st grade is identifying question and answer phrases in songs.  You can read more about how we started learning question and answer songs in my blog post about whisper phones.

As a final Happy Halloween treat, my first graders showed their knowledge of question and answer patterns by performing different motions for each part of the song.  The piece we used is called "Halloween" composed by Moiselle Renstrom and was taken from the 1st Grade Music Connection Series by Silver Burdett and Ginn.  Students identified the question by floating like a ghost, and they identified the answer by freezing and clapping.  This is Mrs. Shull's 1st Grade class at Mill Road showing what they know!  Happy Halloween!

Christmas in October!

Like many music teachers, the holidays always start early for me.  I sometimes shake my head when I see some of the big chain stores getting Christmas trees and other holiday decorations out with the Halloween candy.  Meanwhile I'm just as guilty!  My 3rd graders are singing songs like "Old Abram Brown" and "Skin and Bones" in the first 10 minutes of class and learning songs about winter and holiday cheer in the last 10 minutes!

We have officially begun the holiday season in my elementary music classes, especially for the 3rd graders, who are the main performers at our annual Carol Sing (what we call our holiday assembly).  It has been the practice for the last few years in my schools for each 3rd grade class to learn 2 songs that they perform for the whole school.  After selecting the songs, I write a story/script based on the songs and the theme of the show that the students read.  I have done everything from a Pirate Christmas to a show based on healthy eating and exercising habits!  

This year the students at Mill Road Elementary will be presenting a show with a western theme and students at Bainbridge will be performing a show based on a super hero theme!  It's always a creative work out for me to bring the school theme, selected music and story together into our carol sing performance and this year is no exception!

 Since choral experiences aren't offered until 4th grade in our district, the 3rd grade Carol Sing performance may be the first experience many of my students have with performing in a choral setting. I love seeing the excitement on the 3rd graders faces when we start preparing for the Carol Sings. Many students are already making plans to create a costume or choreograph different sections of the songs!

For my parent readers, you can stay up to date on important Carol Sing information through my website links for the Bainbridge Carol Sing and Mill Road Carol Sing.

Kodaly...What? Who? and How do you even pronounce that?

First, let me say, I LOVE KODALY (pronounced co-die).  Ok, so I've never actually met the man himself, but his method is pretty great!  In 2012, I finished my master's degree at West Chester University with a concentration in the Kodaly Method.  It was the best thing I have ever done in my teaching career and studying the Kodaly Method has really changed how I think about teaching my students music concepts.

In short, Zoltan Kodaly was a Hungarian musician, composer and educator who strongly believed that the best way to get kids interested in music was to expose them to songs, musical games and dances from their own culture.

The main goals of Kodaly are to instill a love of music in every student and to enable them to become musically literate.  In my music classroom, you will see the Kodaly Method in action in almost every aspect of what we do.  As I prepare my lessons, I focus on three main facets of teaching a new concept: preparing, presenting and practicing.

Preparing:
 I believe that it is important for the students to internalize each musical concept, which might mean feeling, hearing and even performing the new concept before actually knowing what it looks like or what it is called.  Students in my classroom will play games, sing songs and participate in listening activities that contain the new concept in order to prepare them for when I actually label it.


Presenting:
My favorite part about being a teacher is getting to see all of those "light bulb" moments, when a student finally understands a new skill or concept.  Often they are even able to make the connections on their own, sometimes before I label it.  The days I present a new concept are the best days for seeing those "light bulbs" turn on!  After preparing for several weeks to identify a mystery note or rhythm, the students finally understand not only how it sounds, but also what it looks like and what it is called.


Practicing:
After a new concept is presented, we continue using songs, games and dances to help the students maintain their knowledge of the new information they have learned.  Practicing a skill could mean identifying the new concept in a listening activity, performing the new concept or writing it.  The practice stage often links with the prepare stage as the students start to compare known information to unknown concepts.


When you ask the students about what they have learned in music class, you might see them use hand signs or hear them use rhythmic and melodic syllables that sound like nonsense words!  In my classroom we use "ta and ti-ti" rhythm syllables, which help to give a sound to each type of rhythm.  It is almost as the students are learning a new language!

We also use hand signs and melodic syllables to help the students feel and see how high or low pitches are and their relationship to other pitches in music.  We call the syllables "solfa" or "solfege" and the hand signs we use are called the "Curwen Hand Signs."  They may remind you of that iconic song from "The Sound of Music."

For more information on the Kodaly Method, you can visit the Organization of American Kodaly Educators Website.

Whisper Phones

The 1st graders just learned their first "question/answer" song: Cuckoo.  In the song I sing a "question" (a beginning phrase)  and they sing the "answer" (something different than what I sing).  Since this is the first time the students learned a song in which they sing something different from me, it always poses some teaching challenges. 

A few years ago I started explaining the process to the students by comparing it to how we have conversations on a phone and would use my hand as a telephone. This explanation did a lot to help the students make connections and speed up the rote process.

This week, however, I tried a new strategy with the 1st graders.  Each student was given a "Whisper Phone", essentially an acoustical tube that allows them to hear their own voice.  Most students use these devices in their reading interventions, to be able to hear themselves speak and encourage fluency and inflection. I've actually had an entire class set of whisper phones at one of my elementary schools, but never used them before this week.

Wow!  It worked like magic!  Not only did the students instantly make the connection, without much teacher talk, but it was the first time in my teaching career that I've taught the song "Cuckoo" and did not have the students echo my phrases, which is their natural tendency since it is all they have done since the beginning of the year.  This strategy tapped into the students' need for pretend play in order to make connections with their world.  On top of that, I loved that the whisper phones were a great tool to help my emerging singers hear what their voice sounds like and whether or not they are matching my pitches.

A New Activity for 3rd Grade

This year I am trying to do more ball bouncing activities with the 3rd graders.  Here is Mrs. Tuell's class from Mill Road Elementary performing Hammer Ring using the balls.  Normally I do this activity as a stick passing activity, but I decided to try it with bouncing instead this year!

Hammer Ring is a work song that was most likely used by prison chain gangs in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Work songs have an important function in folk music, as they gave a meter to tedious and dangerous jobs, often keeping the workers on task, and out of harms way.  Work songs are a great way to practice steady beat and meter concepts in our music lessons.

In this video you will notice that some students sat out during the activity.  First, we practiced the ball bouncing pattern as a class.  They were then challenged to do the activity again and those that caught the ball were allowed to continue in the activity, while those that missed the ball had to sit out.  In a subsequent week, we may increase the tempo after each round to see who is the last bouncer standing!  Part of our code of conduct talks about having integrity.  As you can see from the video, our students practice that part of the code of conduct every time we play a game like this.

A big "Thank You" to the PTOs for providing funds to purchase the balls for our bouncing activities!

Joining the Uke Nation

The PTOs at Bainbridge Elementary and Mill Road Elementary are gracious enough to provide our teachers with a very nice sum of money to be used to provide materials for the students.  Last year, I used some of this PTO money to buy a ukulele.  Its been one year since I started learning how to play the ukulele and it has been a lot of fun for myself and the kids!

Currently I'm using the ukulele in the classroom to provide accompaniment for the students during game songs and other activities.  It proved to be much more practical than moving a piano around when I had to move to the library for music classes once a week last year.  It also helps students create more concrete connections when we are studying how string instruments work and what they sound like.

At Mill Road, students participate in a "read-in" for the first 15 minutes of the school day, when buses are arriving and students are buying their breakfast.  On the days that I've been on duty for the read-in we have done a "sing-in" instead.  Singing as a whole school has been a really neat bonding experience and its a great way to get the kids focused and ready to learn with a smile on their face!

And more books!

If you read my earlier blog post, I explained how my passion for children's literature has become somewhat of an obsession.  In the last four months I have gone to about 3 different book sales and countless thrift shops and yard sales, scouring Lancaster County for cheap treasures!  

My biggest find was the book "Music Play," which I actually just bought with budget money for this year (more to come on Music Play and Gordon's Music Learning Theory in another post).  At a book sale I found an early edition of "Music Play" in nearly perfect condition for only $1.50!  Now I can have a copy at each of my elementary schools!  

 I recently went to the Etown Library book sale and came home with about 20 books that I can use in the classroom.  Most are song-based picture books, which means that the text is simply the lyrics of a known song. Here are a few of the books that I purchased at the sale:

There is something magical about books. As soon as I mention that we will be using a picture book the room gets quiet and there is this peaceful excitement about the room.  Kids just love to be read to and I love that I can do that in a way that also facilitates the learning of musical concepts.

In preparing for the conference that I will be presenting at in November, I came across some interesting research by Dr. Amanda Montgomery and Dr. Kathryn Smith of University of Alberta in Canada.  They did a study in which students participated in a reading program that only used song-based picture books.  Students that were identified to have an academic need in reading came to a program with their parents on a weekly basis and were given a series of song-based picture books that teachers modeled for the parents and then the parents read at home.  Parents kept a journal and testing was done to see how much progress the students had made during the program.

Some interesting findings from the program were that the song-based picture books made reading fun for the whole family!  Younger, and even older, brothers and sisters also wanted to participate in the nightly reading of the song-based books.  Parents were surprised that songs they considered to be "babyish" were so engaging for the students.  Most importantly, the rhyme scheme and familiarity of the tune acted as a scaffold for the students as they were encouraged to read on their own.  Using the song-based picture books helped the students move through unknown or difficult words.

Click here to read the actual journal article.

Maybe you have some song-based picture books that you can pull out for reading with your family tonight!

Books, Books and More Books!

Aside from music and dance, I would have to say that I have a passion for children's literature!  I love using books in my music teaching and it has become somewhat of an obsession of mine to be able to find children's books that I can integrate into my regular lessons.

This past September, I gave a presentation on using children's literature in the music classroom at a Kodaly Educators of Eastern Pennsylvania workshop, which was held at Etown College.  We had a lot of fun singing and playing while we read some of my favorites from the classroom.

Sing-Along Song, by JoAnn Early Macken will probably make an appearance in 1st grade in a few weeks.  It is about a boy who hears music in everyday things like a bee buzzing or his baby sister cooing and when he hears music he's just "gotta sing along!".

A favorite of mine to use in 2nd grade is Ten in a Bed by Mary Rees.  It is a song-based picture book, which means that the text of the book is simply the lyrics of a song.  2nd graders will be using this story in the coming weeks and I can use it as a great way to assess the students' knowledge of mallet technique while playing our orff instruments.

Another first grade favorite that will be read later in the year when we are focusing on tempo is Love you Forever, by Robert Munsch.  This summer I wrote to Mr. Munsch to ask his permission to use some of his text in my presentation.  He wrote a nice letter back and was happy to hear that Etown kids are reading his stories.  

Here is a link to a YouTube video of  Robert Munsch singing his version of the "Love You Forever" Song.

Wheel Away! by Dayle Anne Dodds is a newer book in my collection.  I found this book at a book sale over the summer and was excited to try it out at the KEEP workshop.  This was not only a workout for the participants who kept an ostinato going the whole time, but also for me as many portions of the text are like tongue twisters!

I will be presenting at our regional conference for the Organization of American Kodaly Educators: Eastern Division in November on the same topic.  You can look forward to hearing about my experience at the conference and some more information on the books I will be presenting.

Welcome to the Music Room Blog!

I'm excited to start a new portion of my website: The Blog!  I'm hoping that this blog becomes a place that I can quickly share activities that the students are working on, including pictures of music room happenings.  This will also be a space for me to post reminders about upcoming events.  I will also be posting some information about different teaching methods and philosophies that I often use in my music teaching.