5th and 4th Grade: Ukulele We began this class by learning about one of the most well-known ukulele players, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, known as "IZ." He was known as "the voice of Hawaii" for his great contributions to Hawaiian music and how he helped to bring Hawaiian music to the rest of the world. His recording of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" is still recognized by most people nearly 30 years after it was recorded. We then worked on the open strings on the ukuleles again. We started off with a game of "Cool Hand Uke," a friendly competition between students to be the first to correctly play the open string named. Then they practiced our four open string exercises. They're getting more and more control in plucking individual strings! 3rd Grade: Melody After practicing note reading with a round of the game Staff Champion, students began learning about intervals, which are the measurements between pitches. In this class, we focused on steps (from one pitch to the very next in a scale), skips (skipping over one pitch), and repeating notes. After some practice with intervals and learning how they work on a piano keyboard, we began seeing all three in action in the song "The Star-Spangled Banner." All of the students recognized our national anthem and many were able to sing along right away. We discussed how the intervals and range make this song unique and challenging among national anthems. The lyrics were written in 1814, so they include many words that we don't use much in normal speech today. We went through the first verse, made sure everyone knew the meaning of every word, and the meaning of the verse as a whole. 2nd Grade: Baroque Period Today's journey to the baroque period focused on the ornaments (fancy musical decorations) used in baroque music and the German composer Handel. Students learned about three of the most common musical ornaments–trill, turn, and appoggiatura. Then, they added their choice of ornaments to a song they all new, "Mary Had a Little Lamb," to create their own baroque-ish version of the song. Most classes agreed that after adding 5-7 ornaments, it got to be too much. A few sound great, but too many makes it hard to even understand what the song is. Students began learning about the early part of the life of Handel, composer of "The Messiah." Handel is a great example of someone who chose to follow his dreams, even though he encountered some obstacles along the way. 1st Grade: Lines and Spaces First graders reviewed all that they have learned about the music staff, how to read notes on it, and the three pitches they've learned so far. We did a short vocal warm-up and assessment using sol and mi, sang "Shiloh," and did some sight-singing (singing music from notation without hearing it first). Then the first graders wrote a collaborative composition using mi, sol, and la. After singing through it, students had lots of opinions about edits we should make! We sang through many edits, just like any other songwriters would, to try to make the best music. Students took a short quiz, then began learning and practicing rhythms that they will use to create an instrumental accompaniment with the song "Shiloh" next time. Kindergarten: Instruments The focus in this rotation's classes was the woodwind family of instruments. We started out singing and playing air instruments (pretending to play) on the song "Air Orchestra." Then students learned about and listened to several individual woodwind instruments, including flute, piccolo, clarinet, bass clarinet, oboe, and bassoon. Bassoon is my main instrument, so I brought in a real bassoon to show them. They were especially impressed by how tall it is (taller than a kindergartner!). Then, we worked on a song called "Woodwind Animals." The song has some blanks in the lyrics that we had to fill in, telling what animal each woodwind instrument in the song sounds like. Students were very creative and thoughtful in choosing the animals that they thought best represented these instruments. Then we sang the new words in the song and acted out the animals!
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