5th Grade: Digital Composition and Notation Fifth graders completed their digital compositions, and we took some class time to share their projects. The students had insightful feedback for each other, and were very supportive of each others' efforts and ideas. After going through the process of making their own decisions about instrumentation, style, and harmonies as composers, we listened to part of Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 5, which is this romantic era composer's only symphony that does not include clarinets, trumpets, and timpani. Students wrote about why Schubert might have made that instrumentation decision and their own opinions about that decision. We also continued our study of standard music notation by learning about music "roadmap" directions, such as D.C. al Fine and D.S. al Fine, which tell a player to return to an earlier played part of a piece of music. 4th Grade & 3rd Grade: Recorders This week we added the note G to our recorder repertoire, and focused on developing good tonguing habits. Tonguing is how notes are separated on most wind instruments by using the tongue to touch the roof of the mouth, stopping the stream of air going through the instrument. Students have no learned four songs, and are about to start learning the highly anticipated "Hot Cross Buns"! 2nd Grade: Melody Second graders have become composers, using what they have learned about melodies moving by steps, skips, and repeated notes. A brand new addition to our classroom is five strips of tape across the carpet that we call "the floor staff." We've been playing a game in which students act as notes by standing on the lines and spaces of the floor staff. One student stands on the left side of the staff, then calls on a classmate to be the next note in the melody, and directing that student by telling him or her to be a repeated note, or a step or a skip up or down. It was interesting to hear how much more melodic their compositions became when they heard what they had created so far played as each student was called on. I can tell these students have good ears for catchy melodies! 1st Grade: Lines and Spaces First graders also used our new floor staff this week as they moved between the notes sol and mi as they listened to music using those notes. They are getting impressively good at sight singing melodies (singing a tune from written music without having heard it before) using these two notes. They also learned a little bit about the treble clef (a symbol that indicates the pitches on a music staff), including how to draw them. Kindergarten: Tempo Kindergartners have continued to listen to, move with, and sing songs in different tempos, feeling how the speed of the steady beat can be different. We had some great discussion about how the tempo of a piece of music can affect the mood or feeling of a piece of music. The students enjoyed learning about how songs sound best when they are at a comfortable tempo by singing the song "Bingo" at speeds that were too slow, too fast, and just right.
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