Real Playas Got Pianoz

Our musician of the week this week was Beethoven and our instrument was the piano. Students got to see the inside of the piano first while I played "Fur Elise" and "Ode to Joy" and then they got their turn!

After class, I tried to be artistic...

3rd Grade also got to play drums after putting together their own rhythms.

Dry Erase Rocks!

I have recently become a big fan of dry erase markers. I have realized that the big books I use for my lower grades have a large staff printed in the back and that it works well with dry erase markers. I am making full use of these new found staffs!

First, my 4th graders got to practice "spelling" words by using the musical alphabet.

You can't see the red board very well, but one student came up with "cabbage" and another came up with "badge". I was quite impressed! 

My second graders used the staff to practice drawing the three ways notes can move: Step-Skip-Repeat.

This isn't on the staff, but here is an example of the "Today in Music We Learned..." chart filled out.

Guitar was our instrument of the week and Elvis was our musician of the week.

So far my new additions are working out really well. The second semester is off to a great start!

2nd Semester!

It is back to school time! The past two days have been teacher work days, which were very much needed! Since I am still relatively new to this whole teaching thing, I like to change things up in the middle of the school year. I am VERY excited about the changes for the new semester!

First off, I want to get more organized and be more direct in what I am teaching. I have a tendency to jump from one idea to another and I don't think the students can really keep up! My solution for my own problem gets the kids involved too. It is a new chart:

I already choose one Rock Star of the Day who gets a sticker and gets to sign my autograph board, but now I'm going to give them the extra task of completing the sentence "Today in music we learned...". Each grade will be able to write their own sentence that I can erase at the end of each day. Of course with kindergarten, I'll write the sentence, but they still have to tell me something that they learned.


My second new addition is a new bulletin board!

Every week I am going to have a new musician and instrument and each day I will put up a new fact about each one. I took the picture of the board set up for Thursday, so there are already 4 facts up. This week's musician is Elvis (his birthday is Jan. 8) and our instrument is the guitar (5th grade is learning chords). I hope to do a wide variety of musicians... maybe even some current artists! *gasp*