Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Week * either side of Winter break and right before Spring break

This rotation is an unusual one.  Rather than give it an actual Week number - I call it the *rotation.  For the Gold and Black Team/Schedule classes this happened the weeks of December 4th and January 8th - either side of Winter Break.  For the Red and White Team/Schedule classes it will happen the weeks right before Spring Break - March 7-17.

During this rotation all grade levels focused on the World Class Outcome:  Assess (K-2) of Defend (3-5) music's role and its impact on the human experience.  This is a tricky one for kids (and adults) to make sense of the language at first.  Our discussion revolved around music's importance in our lives - particularly events or occasions that music enhances or changes the experience.  The students came up with some amazing, thoughtful examples.  Especially after reflection, coming back to it a second day.  After a brief discussion of the WCO, students each responded in a Responsive Circle talk, filling in the blanks:  My favorite (Winter-time/Spring-time) song is ______.  I like it best because ______.  After this circle response, students had the opportunity to choose songs from a menu of song choices which I had in a SMART Board document.  They were excited to discover that many of the favorites they had mentioned were choices for us to sing together.

In the other week of this * rotation, we focused on the WCO Evaluate music to make informed decisions regarding Culture.  We explored a particular kind of Chinese music called Luogu - which involves Percussion Ensembles for festivals.  We had the opportunity to play some drums that came directly to Colorado with some Chinese musicians that performed at the National Orff conference when it was here in Denver in November 2013.  Each class Kdg - 5th grade learned one piece and got to play all of the various instruments.  Each class also viewed some videos of the type of festival/dance piece - Lion Dances and Dragon Dances.
Kindergarten - Shi Wu I (Lion Dance) minus the drum part - that was played by Mrs. Petty - all the other parts (gongs and cymbals) play on the beat
First Grade and Second Grade - Shi Wu II (Lion Dance)
Third Graders learned an excerpt from Da Kaimen:  Grand Opening.  We only tackled the first 5 measures as their piece involved recorder as well as Chinese percussion.  In the process students learned a new note on recorders.
Fourth Grade - Shi Wu I (Lion Dance) including the drum parts
Fifth Grade - Long Wu (Dragon Dance)
Each group learned the percussion parts in the Chinese tradition of presenting the music aurally (only through listening and chanting the rhythm with syllables that indicate which instrument or instruments play.  For example, chahng - everyone plays, dong - the drum head, da, the rim of the drum, kwahn - large gong solo and chay - cymbals/small gongs solo.  It was loud learning, but a lot of fun playing the Chinese instruments.