What's New in Musicplay with Denise Gagne

I loved Halloween when I was a kid - maybe even more than my birthday or Christmas. But the world has changed and with our diverse school communities, not all classes and not all schools celebrate Halloween. What I've tried to do in Musicplay is to provide songs that have the "flavor" and "sound" of Halloween without including lyrics about ghosts or witches. Alternate words are provided for other songs. Fun songs in a minor key are inclusive for those kids who celebrate Halloween and those who don't. The Bony Skeletons is a new song in Musicplay PreK (pt 1). It's online at http://musicplayonline.com/ and is available in the Book/CD as well. When I did this with my preK class, it was May, and they loved the song. One of the students suggested being zombies, so we added a zombie verse.

Long term planning for K-6 music classes is a time consuming challenge. There are new provincial curriculums, new Nafme standards, new district and school expectations to deal with, and there isn't any more planning time for the teacher OR instructional time for the students. Where to start?

The newsletter this week was prompted by a question posed in the Musicplay Teacher's group:

The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns is one of the most loved works for elementary students. Selections 6-19 in the Listening Resource Kit 1 and the Listening section at musicplayonline are from this work.

Quick and Easy Assessments

For the past 2 weeks I've been teaching a new class of Grade 1 and 3 students.  In order to plan instruction, I need to know what they know. When you hear a class perform together you might think they "get it" but it's when I listen to individual students that I can really assess understanding.