As we settle into the 2021-2022 school year, it's time to revitalize our class blog to share with you all the exciting learning that is taking place in music class! Specialist classes are on a four day rotation this year. We just completed our sixth rotation for grades 1-5. Kindergarten is in the middle of the fifth rotation due to their school year starting two days later than the other grades. Here's what we were up to this week! 5th Grade: Meter Fifth graders have been delving deeper into the concept of meter. Meter is how beats are organized into groups (called measures), usually of 2, 3, or 4 beats. They've been studying meter since first grade, but in this cycle, they learned about their first meter that has more than 4 beats per measure! The meter of 6/8 has six beats per measure and an eighth note gets one beat. This is a very versatile meter that can be felt as six, two, or even one beat per measure, making it popular in a wide variety of music. The students counted and played rhythms in this meter on percussion instruments including lummi sticks, triangles, jingle taps, and maracas. 4th Grade: Rhythm Fourth graders have been expanding their knowledge of rhythms this week. We started out by reviewing a new favorite song that reviews the triplet rhythm that they learned about in the last cycle, which has three sounds in one beat. "The Triplet Song" involves call-and-response singing and students split into four parts that take turns chanting very silly nonsense words in triplet rhythms. Students then moved on to learning about another new rhythm, sixteenth notes. Sixteenth notes are four sounds in one beat. They learned to read, hear, and play this new, faster rhythm using the song, "Sixteenth Note Samba." 3rd Grade: Rhythm In this cycle, third graders reviewed what they've been learning about how to read meter signs and identify the meter of song just by listening to it, and they learned about rhythmic ostinatos. Ostinatos are short repeated patterns that are very common in music because they're an easy way to create an accompaniment to many songs. To create their own ostinato accompaniment to the fun, hip-hop style song that they had learned earlier in the unit, "Hey, Mr. Beat Boy," they collaboratively wrote a four measure rhythm using quarter notes, eighth notes, and quarter rests. After composing their rhythm, they practiced playing it. Then we tried each measure as a repeating ostinato and voted on which one was the class favorite. We used that one to accompany "Hey, Mr. Beat Boy." Some students were even able to sing along while they played the ostinato. That takes a lot of coordination! 2nd Grade: Beat Second graders finished up their unit on beat this cycle! We reviewed all that they've been been learning about beat, including strong and weak beats and how they're organized into groups. They seemed to especially enjoy the activity we did with a piece of music called "Mummy Walk." They had to walk around like mummies with their feet moving in time with the beat AND showing the difference between the strong and weak beats. They did very well on the short quiz they took to wrap up the unit! 1st Grade: Meter First graders began a new unit all about meter, or how strong and weak beats are organized into groups. They began by learning about the meter of two with a really fun song called "Stinky Pirates." They used singing, moving, playing rhythm sticks, and conducting to demonstrate the meter of two in this song. They also did a listening game to try to tell the difference between meters of two and four. I was impressed with how well they did! We finished the class by marching and conducting the meter of two in John Phillip Sousa's famous march, "Stars and Stripes Forever." Kindergarten: Voice
Kindergartners continued practicing identifying and using the four voice types: whisper, talk, shout, and sing. They're doing a great job of hearing and feeling the difference between these voices, and determining which voices are appropriate for different situations. These are very important skills in learning how to control the voice in order to use it in an expressive and musical way. They learned the lyrics to a song called, "Kangaroo, Kangaroo," then decided which voice type to use for each line and performed it with those voices. They also composed and performed a simple piece of music using whisper and shout voices (of course, we have to use a pretend shouting voice when we're in school!) with a steady beat. They also played a game they learned in the last cycle in which they have to identify as many voices as they can in 45 seconds. Some of the classes were able to set a new record of 10 voices within the time limit!
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