Here is a synopsis of what happened in music - during instructional Week #6. With the specials schedule that we have at Gold Rush this year, four weeks equals 1 week of instruction in music for all of the students. This covers the time from January 24 - February 18, 2022.
Our "Enter with Ears and Imagination" protocol (introduced in the last rotation) brought the following musical examples to our World Music feature playlist:
- Coolbaroo Wungghee (Old Owl) by Woomera on the Traditional Aboriginal Music album - Australia (Aboriginee)
- These Days by Thelma Plum - Australian Aboriginal pop singer on the album by the same name
Tarantella from Capri: Amore ca ce Struje on the album Italian Folk Music, Vol. 5: Naples and Campania - Tarantella (Dance music) from Southern Italy
In addition to World Music, I have added a composer of the month feature into the Listening Mix. This month, our featured composer was American composer, Scott Joplin. [Note - With the strange shortened week that the White and Black schedule teams had given the snow day and non-contact day, they will get this composer feature at the start of the next rotation]
- Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin
- Kindergartners returned to work with the poem, Engine Engine. Students took turns as the leader of a short line of students - their trains - traveling to the beat and then playing the rhythm of the last phrase, "Yes, No, Maybe So" on the bucket drums. We also discovered the number of beats or pulses in the poem and then used that to figure out the rhythm - whether there was one sound on a beat, or two sounds on a beat. We used train icons (one big train and two small trains) for this notation. Then students were introduced to the notes that these icons represented - the quarter note (known as a "Tah" in rhythm syllables) and a pair of eighth notes (known as "Tee-tee" in rhythm syllables. Students experienced these note values through movement and reading notation. We also took the poem and turned it into a song with our high and low pitches of Sol and Mi. We notated our melody using a 3-line staff with sol and mi in the spaces. Students also got to do some mallet exploration (some with balloons) to help in our preparation for meeting the tone bars. In the next rotation we will meet the xylophones and add a pulse accompaniment to this song.
- First and Second Graders used creative movement to explore the musical qualities of a piece by French composer Claude Debussy, En Bateau - On a Boat. Students moved through the space with a balloon as a prop, working initially alone, and then with a partner. Students also incorporated two mallets with the balloon. Moving freely this way leads to a natural mallet hold, suitable for playing mallet percussion instruments. Students also learned a new melody developed from movement vocabulary and movement sentences. This piece will be played using the tone bar ensemble in the next rotation.
- Third Graders continued learning to play the ukulele, focusing on the C major chord and open strings. Students were introduced to reading 3-note ukulele pieces with treble clef and tablature notation. We revisited the song, "Hot Cross Buns" that students originally learned for recorder. This brought the need to learn a second chord - the G major chord. In addition to accompanying Hot Cross Buns, students also enjoyed a play-along video of the song "Ugly" and strummed and sang along to several two-chord folk songs.
- The Fourth and Fifth graders also continued using the ukulele, focusing first on a review of open strings, adding a 3-mallet xylophone accompaniment and solos into the piece Open String Groove. Students reviewed chord progressions learned in Week 5 and did more work with strumming patterns - creating and notating them and using them to accompany play-alongs. Fourth graders reviewed the C and F major chords and added the A minor chord, experiencing many play-alongs to pop songs. For 5th graders that meant a review of the C major, F major, and A minor chords. Then students learned a 4th chord - the G7 chord. Students chose from several play-along videos as we explored these chord progressions.
In the next rotation, our focus will be melody. Third, Fourth and Fifth graders will get back to playing recorder and treble clef notation. The 5th graders will be finishing up their compositions for layered melodies using recorder and the 3rd and 4th graders will use recorder with other Orff media (e.g. drums and tonebars). Kindergarten students will be introduced to playing tone bar instruments. First and Second graders will focus on playing the melodic percussion (xylophones, metallophones and glockenspiels).