5th Grade: Notation Fifth graders have continued their unit on notation, focusing this week on dynamics. Dynamics are music markings that indicate how loud or soft the music should be. Students have learned about pianissimo (very quiet), piano (quiet), mezzo piano (moderately quiet), mezzo forte (moderately loud), forte (loud), and fortissimo (very loud), as well as crescendo and diminuendo, which indicate gradually getting louder and softer. The students have enjoyed starting music class by sharing their most recent QGroove compositions with their classmates! 4th Grade and 3rd Grade: Recorders & Baroque Period This week, third and fourth graders are working on a new fingering skill. They're still using only the BAG notes, but now they're learning to skip from B to G, which requires moving two fingers at the same time. We're learning a new song, "Recorder Shuffle," that uses a few of these B to G skips. We also backtracked a bit to review the baroque period this week. Students are able to identify a lot of the defining features of music in this period. It was typically very fancy, with a lot of special ornaments, and orchestras were much smaller than they are today and didn't have conductors. 2nd Grade: Improvisation & Baroque Period Second graders have been continuing their study of the baroque period of music (approximately 1600-1750). Have already learned a lot about the characteristics of music written at this time, and they have listened to Vivaldi's "Four Seasons." This week, they began studying Antonio Vivaldi in more depth, learning about his compositions and life. The students were especially interested in learning about his hometown, Venice, Italy. We also reviewed the pentatonic scale (a scale that contains only five notes), which is particularly well-suited to improvisation (making music up on the spot). Each students is getting a turn to improvise eight beats of music using a pentatonic scale on a xylophone or metallophone. I've been impressed by the variety of music the students are coming up with! 1st Grade: Melody & Performance We began a new unit all about melody in first grade this week. Melody is the tune of a song, the part you might sing or hum or get stuck in your head. We're starting by studying melodic direction, how the notes of a melody go up or down or repeat. Students explored this concept using SongBrush, a tool that allows us to "paint" music on the Promethean board, then hear what it sounds like. Different colors represent different instrument sounds that follow the direction of the line. We also had a performance day this week. Students were invited to volunteer to sing or play music that they had learned, or to make up music for their classmates. We were able to practice good performer and audience etiquette. The students really got into their performances and showed that they were listening carefully to the music they heard in their comments after each performance. We will continue to do in class performances whenever we have extra minutes in class. Kindergarten: Long and Short Sounds We started a new unit in kindergarten on yet another musical opposite. We've covered fast vs. slow, high vs. low, and soft vs. loud. Now the students will be learning about duration of notes by studying long vs. short. We began by connecting the concept of long and short to other areas of life, such as measurement of objects, distance between places, and length of time. They have started learning a fun song called "The Long and Short Song" that includes rapping, singing, and a wide variety of long and short sound effects!
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