Thursday, March 10, 2016

Week 7

Our Week 7 - was February 8-19 for the White and Red Schedules and February 22-March 4th for the Black and Gold Schedules.

After completing the composition phase of their Canon assignment, Fifth Graders worked with a partner to perform their piece in a two-part canon.  Students selected instruments or body percussion to perform on and rehearsed both pieces - their own and their partners.  Students had two class periods to rehearse and then over two class periods, students shared their performances in front of their classroom audience.  The performances were video recorded so that students will have a chance to do a self-evaluation at a later time.

Fourth Graders got back to working on their Colorado Connection pieces.  In addition to reviewing what they have been introduced to so far, we added in a descant on Soprano Recorder for the song, Cripple Creek and started on our last two new songs:  Gold Rush Rap and Colorado!  In the rotation following Spring Break we will be sharing all of our Colorado Connection work during an in-school day performance for parents.  The sharing will be video recorded for parents that are not able to come during the school day.

Third Graders worked further on our Rock Concert songs and pieces.  New songs added into the mix were the Rock Rap, Earth Changes and My Favorite Rock.  We continued to work on our Rock Passing game from Ghana, Obwisana, and the opener and closer, Rock Concert.  In the rotation following Spring Break we will be sharing all of our Rock Concert work during an in-school day performance for parents.  The sharing will be video recorded for parents that are not able to come during the school day.

First and Second Graders focused on their musical performance for the Specials Program, "Chart a Course for Healthy Living".  Everyone sang together - in two parts - "Feelin' Good" and each grade level prepared two additional pieces - one that they had voted on.  Second graders all chose the song Move, Move, Move.  They not only sang, but volunteers also showed off some of their favorite dance moves.  Second Graders also extended the work they had done earlier in the year by revamping a pentatonic round with new words.  At the performance, students sang and all played the (Orff) melodic percussion instruments.  First graders brought back their song "Two, Four, Six, Eight" and added movement in a Rondo form - ABACADA - with all students accompanying singing at the xylophones, taking a turn in a movement scene, and singing.  In addition, First Graders chose a song about eating healthily to sing as a feature.  Two classes chose Veggies are Yummy and two classes chose Healthy Food.  Each of these songs had speech interludes that students helped to create based on rhythmic building bricks.

Kindergarten continued their work in this rotation in learning the best playing technique and names of a family of untuned percussion instruments.  We learned about the Rattle family - maracas, chiquita maracas, clatterpillar, vibraslap, handle castanets, and shaker eggs.  Then we mixed the Rattle family in with the Click and Jingle Families that we'd studied last time in our "Listen" game.  We also did some review of Sol-Mi with Engine, Engine and started looking at how pitches are notated.  We learned a fun singing game using those pitches, "Doggie Doggie" or "Music Cat".