Week 10 - March 13 - April 14

At GRE the specials schedule is a 3 week rotation - so 3 weeks equals 1 instructional week for me with all of the students.  That's why this post is called - Week 10 (March 13 - April 14)

Here's what happened In our tenth week together___

• Kindergartners learned a new singing/movement game, Down in the Valley, which starts with one person and doubles each time - first traveling/stepping locomotor and then leading a stationary beat motion for a partner to follow in mirror.  In addition, each student got to sing alone and be the leader for the class in some 3 way echoes - Teacher, solo, tutti - using Sol Mi patterns.  And for fun we learned a couple of songs to sing with guitar accompaniment, The Vowel Song and Throw It Out the Window

• First Graders had "pop corn and a movie" as they got to watch the video of their evening sharing/Performance and do a self evaluation of the Sight, Sound and Sensation of their performance.  The rest of the week we focused on contrasts in music - Loud/Quiet, Long/Short, High/Low.  We did this through games and listening activities.  

• Second Graders had "pop corn and a movie" as they watched the video of their own evening sharing/Performance and did a self evaluation of their performance.  They had two days of song choices from a menu of over 30 Disney Songs.  In addition to student choices, we also had a "Little Piggy Opera" using the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" as the theme for the Drama.  We reviewed various note values with Movement Villages and introducing "chair" notation.

• Third Graders continued working on the piece, Toasted, adding the drum and xylophone parts to the recorder melody they had learned in the previous rotation.  We also experienced a "jam" or improvising a new melody on recorder for an added section of the piece.  After all students had learned all of the parts, students chose one 'special' part to add to the recorder melody - either the drum accompaniment, xylophone accompaniment or the improvised recorder "jam".  We set up a rotation so everyone could play their special part within the musical whole.  We made a video recording of the piece and you'll find it on the "In the Spotlight" page of this blog.

• Fourth Graders wrapped up all of their Colorado Connection pieces this week.  We reviewed and rehearsed them in an order to share with parents.  On Thursday we had our Colorado Connection Concert in the music room during the students' regular music time.  You'll find video of the performances on the "In the Spotlight" page of this blog.

• Fifth Graders chose either their ABA Melodic piece or their Rhythmic Canon to polish, publish and perform.  Students performed several roles in this process - composer, publisher and performer.  The publishing aspect proved to be the most difficult as we were all learning a new online publishing program together.