February Footnotes
February is certainly flying by! Here is a fleeting view of what we have been up to in music.
Kindergarten and 1st grade students are investigating musical contrasts through the use of movement, instruments, graphic notation, voices, recorded music, and a story. Contrasts such as fast/slow, loud/quiet, high/low, heavy/light are being explored. Steady beat and pitch-matching skills are also receiving attention, as well as mood in music, mirroring, creative and expressive movement.
2nd grade students have been enjoying a variety of fun and challenging rhythm games and are becoming very adept at performing rhythmically notated patterns. The children have also been learning about repetition, contrast, and ABA form. These concepts have been experienced and then labeled through the use of manipulatives, a song, chant, and a partner dance. Steady beat and inner hearing skills are being reinforced through a poem and a partner game, and melodic notation using 'mi', 're', and 'do' is being introduced.
3rd grade has learned about sea shanties. After experiencing the sea shanty 'John Kanaka' through a variety of activities, its text provided an opportunity to make a social studies connection. The children have also been learning about rhythmic notation, the percussion family, verse/refrain, and AB form. They are now creating their own symbolic represention of AB form, and are using what they have created to demonstrate their understanding of this concept.
4th and 5th grade have been creating and then performing instrumental and vocal arrangements that were based on a poem. After learning about ostinati (repeated patterns), the children got into small groups and created their own repeated speech patterns to go along with a poem, and then performed their compositions for each other. After each performance, the class had the opportunity to provide positive and constructive commentary, offer suggestions, and make requests. The children are now learning about the recorder family and melodic notation.
4th and 5th graders will be starting the recorder the last week in February! At that time, they will need to bring their recorder and a pocket folder with some notebook paper to each music class. More recorder-related info will be coming your way in future blogs.
