January 24-31

Fifth, Fourth and Third (Buckley and O’Mara) Grade Students can:

Play ukuleles together with others while

1.Strumming along with a play-along song

2.Placing fingers on the right places to create chords

This week the students began to transition to strumming chords while singing. We introduced the C7 chord, which requires students to place one finger in a specific spot and then we played a song along with Lime in the Coconut.

From there, we practiced the C major chord, where we had to move that finger two frets away and then practiced strumming to some easy songs while we sang.

If successful, students were:

1.     Holding instruments correctly,

2.     Placing their left hand on the right string and fret position

3.     Strumming with their right hand, and

4.     Singing a song.

That’s a lot for those young brains to do all at one time! This week was mentally taxing and hard on the strumming hand. About half of the classes did not have the stamina to play the entire class period. I found that as the week went on, I took more time in the lesson, spent more time on tuning the ukuleles because it was obvious that many classes were tiring out before the end of a 45-minute lesson.

(Potocki and Wellborn)

Third Grade Students can:

1.     Play xylophone music cooperatively with others.

2.     Play correct notes at the right time.

The Potocki and Wellborn classes are continuing to work on music with xylophones in preparation for our concert at the end of February. Both classes are doing a terrific job at learning their parts!

Second Grade Students can:

1.Perform an alley dance appropriately (The Noble Duke of York)

2. Sing and move to choreography with a song. (Ritsch Ratsch)

The majority of time this week was spent improving the dance that we learned last week. Last week the students learned the basic form, or movements to the dance. However, there were a lot of mistakes and other issues that needed to be cleaned up. The dance is just complicated enough that it doesn’t really look good on SeeSaw unless we spend some time to clean it up.

Every class knows that they are going to demonstrate the dance on SeeSaw for next week’s lesson.

With the time remaining we played a short rhythm game called Ritsch Ratsch. In my curriculum it is supposed to lead to another lesson next week. I’m thinking that I will modify that lesson as it has not always been a successful lesson for me in years past. I hope I can report a success next week!

First Grade Students can:

1.Accurately sing So-Mi patterns back to the teacher

2.Identify So-Mi in a song. (Teddy Bear)

3.Imitate rhythm patterns

4.Improvise movement to an accompaniment (What Shall We Do?)

All the first grade classes are now caught up with each other after our day at the zoo and my own absence day.

The first and second learning target were part of melodic training. I’m working through training the ears of the students to hear, identify and respond through motions or by singing the appropriate notes in a melodic sequence. In first grade, we start with Sol-Mi, the 5^th and 3^rd of a musical scale. Those notes are the most often notes used in children’s self-initiated play (playground songs) so are a natural place to start melodic training.

We started the lesson with students echoing simple melody fragments. I’m seeking to hear the students sing the correct pitch while showing the correct motion (up and down) along with the note they are singing. With later classes in the week, I progressed to doing hand motions only and they sang the pattern back to me. There were varying levels of success with that particular exercise! As that concluded, it naturally led into the next learning target.

I introduced the song Teddy Bear by using the solfege syllables for the song, then teaching the song piece by piece, including motions. We progressed to the group competency at singing the song with motions along with me, then motions only with no singing (not always easy! It requires having the song playing silently in their head), and then singing the song with motions without teacher help.

Class finished with a song What Shall we Do? Students came up with ideas for activities they do outside and then they improvised movements to those activities during the B section of the song. So students were performing the song in a two-part form (which could have been a secondary learning target) by standing and singing on the A part and improvising motion on the B part.

Kindergarten Students can:

1.Use my own body to make shapes. (Alphabet Fun)

2.Move creatively in response to a story. (The Snowy Day)

3.Explore and Respond to the four vocal qualities. (ABC Song)

Students in Kindergarten learned about the four kinds of voices this week. We discussed which voices are musical (singing and speaking) and which are not (whispering and shouting). We talked about that when we ask kids to sing louder, that does not mean yelling. Students practiced using all voices on the ABC song.

We brought back the book The Snowy Day from last week and used it to pantomime movement to the motions suggested by the book. Improvised movement is the way a student can show creative expression at this age.

We continued on that theme of exploring motion by showing the shapes of letters of the alphabet with our bodies for the song Alphabet Fun.