January is the month when many teacher’s decide to teach a recorder unit. My own preference, is to start recorder in January of Grade 4. The students have had another year of musical instruction, the hands are bigger, and they progress more quickly than students who begin in Grade 3.
Assessment of Performances
The holidays are coming! Teachers can tell that a school break is coming without having to look at a calendar. I found this post on Facebook - it is too true!
October is a fun month - even if you don't have Halloween at your school. If a song in Musicplay talks about Halloween, options are always given to adapt it so that all students can participate. Pumpkin Stew is a simple chant that you can use to create a rondo, and create ostinato accompaniment. BATS is a kids favorite song, with cool sound effects created on balloons.
Canadian Thanksgiving falls on Monday, October 10th. For my American friends, save this newsletter until November!
There is a new interactive staff lesson attached to Songs 1-6 in K-6 at www.musicplayonline.com. When I teach the staff, I use several tools - the floor staff games, hand staff, cookie sheet staff, and now there's an interactive tool to help students learn about the staff. If you have a SMART Board or IWB, you or your students can drag the lines to make the staff or drag the treble clefs to the staff. If you don't, you can do this with the mouse on your computer or on an iPad. The first four activities are suitable for all grades - even your kindergarten students can learn that the staff has 5 lines.
It's difficult to have good classroom management or to assess if you don't know the names of your students. I met a teacher in Ontario (Dan - my hero!) that teaches more than a thousand students each week. Although it might seem impossible to learn the names of that many students, if you review names at the beginning of each class, you have a chance at least at remembering them for the 30 or 40 minutes that you're with them.
In teaching music, assessment of the student's knowledge is relatively easy. There are a multitude of ways that you can use to determine if your students know that forte means loud.
Easter and Mother's Day are closer together this year than I can ever remember. This lesson is from Musicplay for Kindergarten, but you can teach the song to Grade 1-2 as well.
With Easter weekend coming up soon, I’d like to focus on a dynamics lesson from Musicplay 3, that uses the game, “Find the Basket.” There are similar games in Musicplay 1 and 2. If you teach Grade 4, 5, or 6 play the game with them. They still love to play games, and this is a great way to review dynamics.