MIOSM Part I

March is Music In Our Schools Month!! 

 For the first half of the month, I have been trying to have a music presence known through bulletin boards, posters and books. I've also been bringing in instruments from home so that students can have some hands-on experience with things like trumpets, violins and snare drums.

I tied in Read Across America day by reading some music themed books. We also sang a couple of songs to Dr. Seuss.

(To the tune of Old MacDonald)

With your rhymes so crazy

You are number one!

You make us laugh and wonder

You make reading fun.

We love the Cat in the Hat

Sam I Am and Fox in Socks

Dr. Seuss, we love you

We really really do!

If You're Happy And You Know It...

 - Hop on Pop!

 - 1 Fish 2, Red Fish Blue

 - Hear a Who

... and your reading surely shows it!

Decorations for Read Across America Day! 

Some of the books include Pete the Cat, Music Teacher from the Black Lagoon, Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin!, Story of the Orchestra, Oh the Places You'll Go, and I Can Lick 30 Tigers Today

I had to do the bulletin board in the lower hall this month, so I stole an idea from Music K8 and did "How to Conduct Yourself"

Singing faces done by some of my lower grades.

March is the Romantic Period. Our composers include Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Wagner.

Close up of out timeline that we are slowly building this semester.

I made a time signature anchor chart based off of the idea from the North Pointe Music Room. 

Very happy with how it turned out and how the students are responding to it. 

A Game Called Listening

We played a game with 3rd & 4th grade that was sort of like a musical treasure hunt. One student went to our starting position and closed their eyes. Then four other students had to get them through the classroom to the finish line simply by playing instruments. If they played a drum, the student moved forward. Tambourine was a step back. Maracas were left and a Triangle was right. I don't have any pictures of the game in action, but it was a lot of fun!

Here is a random picture of our "Today in Music We Learned" board. Some days it feels like the students get it more than others. I can't help but cringe a little if the student writes "singing". We learn so much in every class!

Posters for our K, 1st & 2nd performance coming up in March!

February

My kindergartners will be singing "New Way to Walk" for their spring concert. When I told them to come up with a new way to walk, they organized themselves and made a train! 

February is focusing on the Classical Period. The students were very excited to see Beethoven on the board.

My kindergartners and 1st graders helped me decorate my "We <3 Music" board.

From a kindergartner.

I was very impressed with this 1st grader because we just learned the official notes for quarter and eighth last week!

Pitch, Please!

Kindergartners discussed high and low pitches. Jenny over at The Teaching Studio came up with this great idea of having students pick out pictures and deciding if they represent high or low. For example, an ant would be low because they crawl on the ground and an airplane would be high because they fly. The students then went to the piano and played the corresponding high or low pitch.

My 4th and 5th graders did centers to reinforce the the treble clef and staff. One was a matching game.

I put electrical tape on the floor to make a staff and students used paper plates to spell out words and have relays.

Another center was with the glockenspiels. I gave the letter E and the students had to figure out how to play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" by ear and then write it on the staff.

All in the Family

I was much older than I would like to admit before I realized that you can look at any instrument and be able to tell what orchestra family it would fit into. I thought you just had to know that a trumpet was brass but a saxophone was a woodwind. Because of my ignorance, I try very hard to make sure that students learn what characteristics an instrument needs to belong in each family.

We made anchor charts for each family. I wrote it, but had the students tell me what to write.

My older grades did a review of instruments by playing a guessing kind of game. They had an instrument on a sticky note on their head and had to ask their partner yes or no questions to try to figure out what instrument they were.

My 2nd graders discussed each family and then color coded a seating chart for an orchestra.

New Semester

I always like to change a couple of things at the end of each semester. Don't want to get stuck in a rut. :)

Front of my classroom. I kept the "Rockin Behavior Chart" from the beginning of the year. I changed my rules and added made some new posters.

My new set of rules... I mean expectations. They spell music!! 

Make the right sound at the right time.

Use good manners.

Show respect to all.

Involve yourself in activities.

Care for music room equipment.

I talk about pitches, notes and rests so often, I thought it would be a good idea to have a poster for each that I can refer to for those visual learners. I made my notes and rest chart like a fraction chart I noticed in a 4th grade classroom. I saw a couple of lightbulbs go off when I showed it to the students. 

New bulletin board for this semester. I am going to spotlight a period of music every month and discuss three of the composers from that time. I have blank fact sheets beside each composer for the students to fill out. I am bribing them by saying that every time they look up a fact about one of the composers, they will get candy. January is Baroque month!

Close up of Bach and his blank fact sheet.

Chy-Cough-Ski

In December we started our unit on instruments and making music. We also learned about Tchaikovsky and The Nutcracker.

1st Grade drew a picture of their favorite instrument.

Kindergarten 

Kindergarten practiced writing and coloring.

2nd Grade listened to the March and Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy and colored a picture to match. 

They also had to write a sentence about The Nutcracker. 

We watched Jim Gamble's puppet version of The Nutcracker. I think the boys liked it better because it wasn't a ballet. :)