I Love Pinterest!

I was very inspired by Pinterest at the beginning of the school year when I was arranging and decorating my room. These are some of my newest additions to my music classroom.

 The Music Burger- to guide evaluations

 Based on Marzano- Self Assessment

 Why Composers Write Music Poster!

Ensemble Singing

...And All That Jazz

 

In April, we celebrated “Jazz Appreciation” month. Third grade participated in many Jazz activities including learning to scat, online research, and a “Jazz Musician” project. The pictures above show all the impressive work my students created. Each jazz musician features a bubble map of their life, a symbol that contains famous works the musician performed, a replica of the musician’s instrument, facts about these instruments, and a life size cut-out of the composer. I was really impressed with my students overall work and it only took us two, 45 minute class session to complete!

Musical Word Clouds

My technology assistant at school introduced me to www.tagxedo.com. This is a fun website where they say you can “make word clouds with style.”  I uploaded music notes and rests clip art I found through Google and used each note as my shape. I then typed in “the type of note” and “it’s value (beats).” Tagxedo then created each note and rest using the words in its name and value. For example, the words “quarter,” “note,” “one,” and “beat,” appear in the quarter note word cloud in the shape of a quarter note! This is a great visual for my students!

iMUSIC

I have how music teaches 21^st Century Skills posted in my classroom on iPOds. I try to include the use of these skills in each of my lessons weekly. Not to mention, the iPods catch my students’ attention and they like to go over to them and read them often!

Volunteers

“We want to THANK YOU for all you have done…” I love having the students perform to show signs of thanks. This year at our volunteer breakfast, a third grade class, All County Chorus Members, and the Student Council performed for our awesome volunteers. I also had two very talented pianists play as the volunteers were greeted at the door and walked through the breakfast buffet line.

Arts Alive Week

March 26-30, 2012

In the past, we have had an "Arts Alive!" night every other year. This year, we decided to turn that one night into a week of celebrating the arts.

The University of North Carolina Historical Speakers came to perform stories for our fifth grade students.

The Trask Traveling Theatre Group from Trask Middle School came to perform funny versions of classic fairy tales for our entire school.

Our Fifth Grade AIG Language Arts Students performed storytelling for the second graders one morning.

Although this was not purposely scheduled for this week, the Roland Grise Middle School Orchestra came to perform for our fifth graders, and it was a perfect fit! The orchestra taught the fifth graders about the string instruments and how to sign up for orchestra in middle school.

The Ukulele Academy came to perform for all of our students. They played authentic Hawaiian music and even tied in some other genres as well.





Music in our Schools Month!

March is "Music in our Schools" month and each year we celebrate by having talent shows during music class. All of the students are encouraged to perform. Students that do not wish to perform practice concert etiquette. I LOVE talent show week. I get to see students who play instruments grow each year during their performances and I even get to see hidden talent I have never seen before!



Read Across America Week 2012

March 5-9, 2012

This year, I shared Dr. Seuss' "Oh, The Thinks You Can Think" with the entire school. Our week was full of creating and imaginating inspired by the book. We composed music, invented music symbols, and created instruments.

So Much To Catch Up On!

There is so much to catch up on! I finally got my new blog "A Very Creative Songbird" up and running. My new blog will feature all things music in a creative way! Check out the next few posts as I catch you up on our exciting activities from the month of March!