Eggs and Wish Lists

Hi there everyone, it's me, Amy Abbott.  If you are a reader of my blog you know that I have a SLIGHT obsession with Easter Eggs.  The incredibly ironic thing is that I don't even touch Easter in my classroom  I just thing they are fun little things to use to incorporate reading or other concepts into your teaching.  And since on my own blog I'm hosting a "Wish List Wednesday" on my blog (and I get a lot of people asking which ones I get and how I use them) I thought I would link up and join the Linky Party.

But, instead of discussing Teachers Pay Teachers Products that I would like to get, I thought I'd share some of the new Easter Egg Finds that I have seen in the stores this year and how I'm going to use them in the Kodály Classroom.

The first find, FROGS:
These I found at Walmart.  They are sold in packages of three for $1.00.  My third graders are finishing up concert preparation and then we're diving into ti-tika and these will be used as a practice activity with the song, Frog in the Meadow:

I will most likely make song sort cards.  Each card will be one measure in length and be written in stick notation.  The students will sort out the song and put it in order.  An extension idea would be to have half the eggs have stick notation and half be written in staff notation.  Once students sort out the song, they find someone with the other notation and make sure their answers match.

The next egg find is RABBITS, also found at Walmart:

These will be used with the song Old Mr. Rabbit.

This song is a GREAT song for third grade for low la but is also great in lower grades for improvisation.  One thing I've found about improvisation in the lower grades is that it can be very intimidating.  Sometimes there are so many choices and they have a hard time narrowing down their focus.  I've found one way to prep them and to give them more of a framework is to help them narrow their choices by having some pre-determined answers written out.  So, with "Old Mister Rabbit" in improvisation portion comes at the end where they insert a different vegetable.  With the Rabbit Eggs I'm going to put two cards in each egg, with each egg containing a different vegetable name.  This way the students still have a choice, which it what improvisation is about, but it makes it less intimidating.  This is the first layer of scaffolding this activity.  The next time they come they would try to insert a vegetable name without using the eggs (the second time I would give them the option to use the eggs or not and the third time it wouldn't be a choice.)  By the third lesson they should be able to insert a vegetable without the eggs.

The next egg, and this one I'm excited about: DARTH VADER.
These can be found at both Target and Walmart.  I bought some last year AFTER Easter (they were on sale, hurray!  But there weren't many) so I bought more this year at Walmart.  The downfall, they contain candy so they're more expensive.  The upside, they contain candy!

Those of you that might follow my TpT store know that I have some Rhythm War files.  I plan on using them for rhythmic dictation and composition by using the cards from my Scrambled Eggs file and putting them inside the eggs, like so:
The other way I'm going to use them as a song sort for Augie's Municipal Band, which is a low so practice activity.  Here are some sample cards that I'm going to put in the eggs:
They are written in stick notation, which is the easiest to decode:

 But to differentiate I'm going to challenge my higher readers to use the staff notation:

The next find, GEMS!!!  This one has SO many possibilities!!!  But, again the downfall is that they're more expensive because they contain candy, but the upside is they contain candy.


 Again, they can be used with my scrambled eggs file.  Here's how that would look:
This could be used with upper elementary grades for dictation and composition in conjunction with songs such as "Queen Alexandria" (and could be used with solfa instead, which is in the Scramble Eggs file.  Or it could be used for 6/8 and ti):

They could be used with Peg Leg the Pirate for syncopa and low la practice:

They could be used for practice re with Sailor, Sailor on the Sea:

Or with King's Land:

But one of the ways I'm really excited to use them is with Kindergarten.  Using either "Queen, Queen Caroline"
 or "Good King Leopold"

I'll have different types of way to use your voice: sing, speak, high, low, loud, soft, Mickey Mouse, monster, robot, etc.  They'll get to pick a gem and the strip of paper inside the gem will tell the class which voice to use.

Of course the song choices to use with these eggs is infinite!!

So, I hope you got some ideas and don't spend too much at Walmart and Target!!!

Speaking of sales, there is a big site wide sale at Teachers Pay Teachers this Thursday and Friday.
Many of the contributors of this blog will be participating, so head over and visit these stores:

Aileen Miracle
Amy Abbott
Lindsay Jervis
Karla Cherwinksi
Kate Klotz
Tanya LeJeune
Jamie Parker
Chrystine Tinney

    
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2 Games for Upper Elementary Students


 

2 Games for Upper Elementary Students

Shangai Chicken
a great song found in the "Erdie 150 American Folksongs"
a great game to teach the rhythm 'ti-tom'

This game is adapted from one I learned from Nancy Johnson. 

You Need
an egg shaker for every child
Patience

First game is with partners 
(I choose their music partners and they are permanent for 4 months at a time)
Students keep a steady beat with the egg shakers
on the 'hoodays' each child throws their egg in the air.
On the very last 'hooday' they toss the egg to their partner

This is what the game looks like with partners



After the partner game has been mastered, try groups of 4.
on the last "hooday" toss the egg to the right.
This is what practice looks like (a little chaotic)


When it is 'finished'


This is a Polish version of "Oboshinotentoten" collected by Minnesota Ethnomusicologist 
Bob Walser. 
The children have a tendency to Americianize and vary the lyrics even after they have been taught phonetically!
 The lyrics are a list of Polish foods and instead of being 'out' on numbers, they are out on the word "chek" which happens three times at the end of the song.
TRICKY!


Text
(in phonetic Minnesotan)
"Chatlak patlak you soo are lak
kermal cherlek you zoo ber lak
Chek, dolstom chek,
Amanem dolstom chek!
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One word: Singing

Happy Wednesday! This is Aileen from Mrs. Miracle's Music Room. Today I'd like to explore one of my favorite quotes by Zoltan Kodaly:

"If one were to attempt to express the essence of this education in one word, it would only be - singing."


Singing is the foundation of any Kodály-inspired classroom. In the elementary school, from the time Kindergarteners step into our rooms on the first day of school until the time fifth or sixth graders leave us on the last day of school, we are exploring or voices and singing as much as we can!

In the spirit of Kodály's quote, I will share strategies to keep your kids singing as much as possible!
  • Have students come into the room singing. This way, the beginning of music class starts musically, gets them immediately engaged, and keeps them singing!
  • Have students sing from point A to point B. Instead of just saying, "Everyone get into a circle," or "Everyone go back to your seats," you can have them sing a song as they are moving. This is something they will need some training and experience with--many students will feel a need to talk instead of singing!
  • Similar to above, instead of having them sing aloud back to their seats, you could either have them "loo" the song (sing the melody, but all on the word "loo") or have them sing inside their heads. I love doing this, because when a student talks instead of singing inside his/her head, we can have a talk about how it is impossible to both sing inside your head and have a conversation aloud! This strategy is a great way to improve their inner hearing! (Thank you to Bruce Swank for these two strategies!)
  • Another great inner hearing activity that improves their singing is the use of puppets. One of my favorite puppets is "Donnie the Dinosaur" (click the picture below to purchase it on Folkmanis!)


When Donnie is outside the shell, students sing like normal, but when he goes inside his shell, students have to sing inside their heads. Students LOVE this activity; I even have my upper elementary kids take turns being Donnie. My student teacher just used this puppet to help first graders with one of their program songs and it really helped them solidify their singing of the song. There are a few other puppets that you could also use for this, all of which you can purchase by clicking on the picture (can you tell how much I love Folkmanis puppets!??!)

Bear in a tree trunk:

A barrel full of...one monkey! The lid even closes when he's inside the barrel!
 This one can also be bought as a hand puppet, but if you want to save money this finger puppet will work just as well!

A raccoon in a trash can...seriously so cute!

This one could double as an inner hearing puppet and a puppet for "Snail Snail"!
  • In the younger grades, have students explore their voices at some point in every music class. There are so many great resources for vocal exploration (and it just occurred to me, this might be a great idea for my next blog post!) so I will save those ideas for next time I blog! I will say that the vocal exploration could be short--students pretend to throw a frisbee or a snowball, students make animal sounds like a rooster or wolf, or you could have students explore their voices with a picture book.
  • Have high expectations. If your students sing incorrectly and you don't correct it, they will keep singing it incorrectly. If I notice my students making a mistake, I model what they are doing and then what it should sound like. If my students are not singing well while playing a game or playing instruments, I stop the game or instrument playing until they sing well. These high expectations help develop their accuracy and pitch-matching.
  • Be mindful of how much you are singing with your students. We all love to sing, so it can be hard to not sing along with them! But sometimes they are depend too much on us, so it is good to back out and see if they can still hold it together!
  • Include songs in your lessons that students have to sing over and over again...the more they sing, the better! One of my favorites is "Paw Paw Patch," shown below:

Second verse:
Come on boys, let’s go find her (x 3)
Way down yonder in the paw paw patch.

Third verse:
Pickin’ up paw paws, put ‘em in your pocket (x3)
Way down yonder in the paw paw patch.

For the dance, students stand in a longways set, preferably girls partnered up with boys. On the first verse, the girl at the head of the girl set skips around both sets back to her spot.
On the second verse, the boy at the head of the boy set leads the boys around (like a tall, narrow oval—not all the way around the girl set) so that all boys end up in the same position.
On the third verse, students peel the orange, so that the head couple is now at the bottom of the set. Keep dancing and singing!

I hope you found some useful strategies! If you have other singing strategies, please share your ideas in the comments below. Have fun singing with your students!

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Smithsonian Folkways - Folk Music From Around the World

Hi!  I’m Christopher, and this is my first blog post for Kodály Corner.  Usually, I’ll be posting from Seattle, where I live, but today I’m sitting in my hotel room in San Antonio, where I’ve come for TMEA.  As an aside, if you’ve never been to TMEA…….well, there is just nothing quite like it.  Huge attendance, tons of great clinicians, enthusiastic participants, amazing exhibits.  It’s awesome!  I don’t think I’ve ever been in a room for an elementary session where there were something like 1000 people – crazy!  Plus, it’s in San Antonio, which is a super-fun city to visit J  So if you ever get the chance to come down here for the event, go for it!


One thing that has struck me about being at TMEA is the diversity of Texas.  Mexican Americans make up the majority of the minority, but I had many conversations over the three days I’ve been here with teachers who have large populations of students from other countries as well – Spanish-speaking countries like El Salvador and Guatemala, as well as groups of students from Nigeria, Korea, and Myanmar.  I mean, Myanmar?  I had to go look up where that one was!  (It's in Asia, borders six countries, including Thailand and India, and is commonly called Burma.)  One of the things that I love about the United States is our history of welcoming immigrants; treks like my family’s journey from Wales, a hundred years ago, continue to this day, keeping our country evolving and vibrant and filled with new cultural traditions.

For music teachers, I think that this increasing diversity means we need to be on the lookout for new material and ideas that incorporate world music traditions in our classroom. If you have a group of your student population from a particular culture our country, either creating a short-term unit on music from that country or incorporating it throughout the year can be powerful for those students, to experience the music of their mother tongue.  But just about all teaching situations have diversity, even if it is not initially apparent.  Last year, I did a unit on the music of Turkey with my fourth graders – mostly just because I liked the music and thought that there were some cool connections I could make – but it turned out that two of the students had parents or grandparents who had come over from Turkey.  One parent e-mailed me to thank me for doing the unit, saying that it made him feel connected to the school.

Which brings me to one of my favorite resources: Smithsonian Folkways!  If you don’t know the Folkways website, leave this post now and go check it out!  (http://www.folkways.si.edu).


For Kodály-inspired teachers who primarily use folk music in the classroom, this is an extraordinary resource of traditional music from a wide range of cultures. Folkways is an old record company that was founded in the late 1940s, with a mission to record the sounds of the world.  In the late 1980s, the Smithsonian Institution purchased the label, and all of the recordings they ever released are now available through their website.  You can sample 20-30 seconds of all the recordings for free, and purchase individual tracks for 99 cents.  In addition, all the liner notes are available for free download.  

For music teachers, there are two principal ways to use the archive in the classroom:


(1) Do it yourself!  If you’re looking for music of a particular culture, you can go to the search box in the top left corner, and enter the name of country (or culture, or song name, or whatever you might want to search for).  So, for example, after talking with the teacher this weekend with students from Myanmar, I went back to my hotel room and entered it into the search function.  Here’s some of what I found:




Eight results seemed pretty good to me!  I clicked through to listen to samples from each of the albums, and decided that the more recent release, from 2003, had music that would be most accessible to my students, particularly “The Twelve Royal Gates.”  Now, I’m not doing music from Myanmar in my classes, so I didn’t follow this process through to create a lesson plan.  But if I did, I would write a lesson focusing on the timbre of the harp (with comparisons to other string instruments the students knew), the vocal quality of the singer on the recording, and the contrast between the harp and vocal patterns.  I would also spend more time with the liner notes, to understand the cultural context of the music.

(2) Tools-for-Teaching.  The second option – and probably the one that you should do first – is to check out the Tools for Teaching part of the website: http://www.folkways.si.edu/tools_for_teaching/introduction.aspx

Here, you’ll find lesson plans that other teachers have created around the music of a particular culture.  The lessons contain anywhere from one to four segments, each with a suggested sequence for teaching, links to recordings, transcriptions, and other information about the country and/or musical culture.  They are free.

I have used a number of these lesson plans over the past few years in my classroom.  Like all lesson plans that other people have created, I usually cannot use them exactly as written – my students may have more or less experience than the teacher who created the plan, so I usually have to tweak the sequence of the focus somewhat.  But the authors have done the important work of finding good recordings, providing some transcription and cultural context, and creating an outline of a lesson plan.  Currently, there are over 100 plans from throughout the world.  Particular plans that I have either used as-is or modified for my classroom with success include:
-       Japan, by Colleen Casey-Nelson
-       Jamaica, by Nina Alden
-       Turkey, by Kyra Settle
-       Australia, by Cyndy Nasman
-       Botswana, by Christopher Roberts
That’s right, the last one is my own lesson plan – and you too can write one!  If you create a lesson plan using some music from the Smithsonian Folkways website and think it might be helpful to other teachers, Smithsonian Folkways will consider placing it on the website.

Fair warning: If you’ve never been to the Smithsonian Folkways website before, you might not want to go there right before bed.  You’ll end up mesmerized by wide array of musical choices that you have, with one amazing listening experience following another!

Happy listening and teaching!





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