5th Grade Fifth Graders have been diving into the romantic period (approximately 1820-1910) of music history this week in honor of Beethoven House winning third quarter. Only the last few years of Beethoven's life overlapped what is commonly accepted as the start of the romantic period, but his innovative music helped to push new composition from the orderly and organized classical period into the more emotional and dramatic romantic period. Students began the week learning about Beethoven's life and music, then moved into learning about an important romantic era compositional technique – leitmotif. A leitmotif is a recurrent musical theme that represents a certain character, place, object, feeling, idea, etc. Romantic composer Richard Wagner is well-known for his extensive use of this technique in his operas. Today, leitmotif is still commonly used in music in musicals, movies, video games, and even pro wrestling. See how many leitmotifs you recognize in the video below! 4th Grade Fourth graders are excited to work on their new concert song, "Happy" by Pharrell Williams. Many of the students are already very familiar with this popular song, but learning to sing it in two parts will be a good challenge! The students have also chosen a new recorder piece to learn for the concert. It's called "Hawaii 6-0" and is in the style of the Hawaii 5-0 theme song. 3rd Grade It's been great to see the third graders' ambition and decisiveness in planning their part of the spring concert. They've already memorized the recorder, singing, and rap parts of "Hot Cross Buns," and are adding their own fun attitude and style to this piece. They've really been enjoying their newest song, "Blast Off." We had some great conversation about the emotion in this song and what kind of story could be behind it. They also love practicing "The Star-Spangled Banner." This is not an easy song to sing well, as it requires a very wide vocal range, but their doing impressively well! 2nd Grade Second graders spent the first part of the week working on "Rocky Mountain," an old folk song that they really enjoy singing. We studied the pentatonic scale, which has only five notes (do, re, mi, sol, and la), and analyzed how those pitches are used in individual phrases (musical sentences) in the song. Students also began adding some instrument parts to one of their favorite songs, "Teemo the Singing Monkey." They have been learning about rhythmic ostinatos (repeating patterns), and have had a chance to practice playing an ostinato on triangle with the song. Next week, we'll add more instruments! 1st Grade First graders started picking out their concert songs this week after discussing what makes a good concert piece. Our criteria includes:
Kindergarten This week, we focused primarily on "Bingo," one of the songs that kindergartners have chosen for their concert. Students tried adding instruments to the song, learned about the history of this old folk song, and learning about folk instruments. Bingo was originally composed by an English actor in the 18th century, and made its way to the United States in the 19th century. It was fun to hear the kindergartner's ideas about how a song could travel so far!
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