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Apr
09

BoomWhacker Mysteries in First Grade: Part One

Brenda Muench

For the first time in quite a few years I am teaching 1st grade music in the afternoon again. I still have one section of first that meets in the morning though. I knew when I looked at the schedule over the summer that I would have a huge difference in classroom behavior with my 10 a.m. class and my 1:30 classes.  Unfortunately I was still unprepared for exactly how ACTIVE tired 1st graders need to be! So frustration ensued for both me and the kids as I tried to find something, anything really that would help them learn music and stay focused.

Sometime around January I hit on it! (Yes it took me half the year to find something that worked)

BOOMWHACKER MYSTERIES!!!

My first graders LOOOOOOVE the BoomWhackers and they behave well with them because they don’t want to lose their turn to play. I focus on mastering basic rhythms in first grade. So BoomWhackers work nicely and I get a little iconic note reading worked on as well.

What is a BoomWhacker Mystery? Well, it’s a bit of Name That Tune and ear training with a little story telling worked in.

What I did:

1. Prepping the song for the SMARTboard. I created a square and a rectangle (twice as big as the square) and saved them in the “My Content” gallery in Notebook. Then I took the song Mary Had a Little Lamb and notated the first half of it iconically using my square and rectangle color coded to match the BoomWhackers.

2. Prepping the students. The next week I told the kids that I was getting these mysterious emails from the “BoomWhacker Master” challenging me to figure out a song on the Boomwhackers. All I had was the colored squares and I couldn’t quite figure out how to use Boomwhackers with that. I couldn’t play all the BoomWhackers on my own anyway. What I really needed I told them was some other people to help me out. The excitement in the room was palpable! The kids couldn’t wait to get started.

3. Figuring out the song. I would pull the Notebook file up and we discussed whether we needed the big or little red BoomWhacker to play this. So we talked a bit about high/low on the BoomWhackers and in the icons. We also had to figure out why some shapes where squares and others were rectangles. Each student would then get a BoomWhacker. I had like colors sit together. We would play the song through once and see if we could figure out what song it was. Some classes got it right away. If not, we would rotate to the next color of BoomWhacker and play it again. (This kept the kids who played the less frequently used pitches from complaining and made it more interesting to play the song repeatedly.) I served as the “conductor” and pointed at the the icons on the board to keep us all together and in rhythm. All classes figured out the song by the time each child had played all the colors.

4. Figuring out the end of the song. Now here’s the real kicker! Once the kids knew what the song was they quickly figured out that the whole song was not there. Luckily the “BoomWhacker Master” had given us a few extra icons to use so we could finish out the song. I was concerned my kids would not be able to maintain the focus to figure out the rest of the piece but for the most part they were so invested by this point that they kept working till we got it done. We would sing the song and listen carefully to decide if the next note was moving up, down or repeated to narrow down our choices. Then we would try our test note on the BoomWhackers to see if it sounded right.

5. Proving we had it to the BoomWhacker Master. I told the kids the email I got from the BoomWhacker Master stipulated that we had to prove somehow that we knew the song and could play it correctly. So we decided to make a video and post it on our school’s Schooltube.com page. I let the kids be the “conductor” for the video. Of course once we got the video posted we had to watch all the other first graders to see if they figured it out as well.

All of this took about 3 or 4 music classes. And as soon as we had gotten our congratulatory email from the BoomWhacker Master the kids wanted to know if I had gotten another one!

Category: Elementary, SmartBoard, learning, music  Tags: ,  4 Comments
Oct
08

Happiness is…….

Brenda Muench

Having 2nd graders run up to you at the end of a class and BEG you to let them keep listening to recordings of the orchestra instruments instead of going to their next class!

Category: Elementary, IW, music  Leave a Comment
Jun
29

Trampling Over Old Boundaries

Brenda Muench

boundaries by gordmckenna I teach in a rural area where 10 years ago I couldn’t have dreamed of bringing real people working in the music world to my elementary students.  My school district can’t afford to pay people out to us or to take the students to the people.  The best I could hope for was to find a video that I could use in class.  Well NO MORE!

This weekend I went to Gear Fest 09 a FREE event sponsored by Sweetwater Music.  I found out about this wonderful weekend on Facebook. I recently spearheaded the purchase of a new mixer for our church and we bought it from Sweetwater. So I did a little search for them on Facebook because I liked their customer service so much.  Once I found them I became a “fan” of them.  So a few weeks ago they began announcing Gear Fest.  I checked it out and decided to go.

Upon arriving I set out to see what the lay of the land was and I discovered  so many great things i could do! We visited the tents first. In the tents Sweetwater had representatives for all the different brands of equipment that they sell. I got to talk to guys from Blue and Shure which sure taught me a lot. I even got to purchase a few things.  I’ll talk about those in a later post.

The sessions were the real goldmine for me was the sessions.  I went to one session in particular that was sponsored by AVID Media.  A very knowledgeable man name Brian was leading this particular session.I watched intently how he showed us with incredible ease how he and a co-worker put together a commercial for Audi by adding music to the video that Audi provided. As I was watching all I could think was: I HAVE to get this guy in to talk to my elementary students!!!! I’m sure they’ve never even contemplated this type of musical activity as a career. But here’s the problem….Brian is from California and IW is never going to be able to afford to get him to come to visit our school.  Sooooooooo tech to the rescue!!!

After the session was over I approached Brian and explained my situation.  Then I asked if he know about Skype.  He did.  YAY! So next came the BIG question….Would he be willing to do a short presentation to my 3rd graders about how he put together this commercial and how his musical understanding came into play in the creative process? Brian looked unsure at first but then said, “Sure, why not!” Wooo Hoooo!!!!! THIS is why I believe in spending time learning about all these new techie things.  If I hadn’t been experimenting myself with other members of my PLN then I never would have been willing to make this new connection and feel confident that I could make it work. I can’t wait to see my students’ horizons expanding when they meet Brian this year. Now I’ve just got to figure out when would be a good time to tie this into the curriculum.

It’s going to be a year FULL of learning in the IW Elementary Music Room!!

Category: Elementary, IW, learning, music  Tags: , , ,  Leave a Comment
May
31

End of the year student reflections

Brenda Muench

This year I tried something new during my last few days of music classes.  I had each grade level review the most exciting things we had done in music that year.  Then each section of a class got to look at the list, vote on the 2 most exciting and write a paragraph as a class describing the event or project.  I managed to get the whole project done in one class period of 25 minutes. 

We wrote our ideas on the Smartboard and edited as a class.  I could tell the 3rd graders have been working on writing a good paragraph in language class.  They made sure they had things like topic sentences!  The second and first graders just basically went with whatever order the sentences came out of their mouths.  I did go back and so some basic editing to make things a little more understandable after class was over but for the most part all I did was cut from Word and paste into WordPress. 

I was really amazed at how willing the kids were to recall very specific things about our learning this year for this short project. You’ll see that especially in the 2nd and 3rd grade posts. The 2nd graders had a very good recollection of specific instruments and their families, which was a main focus of our classes this year.  The 3rd graders even went so far as to try and remember all the names of the songs from their Christmas Musical this year!

The hurdle to doing this as a class is that inevitably there are a few kids who just try to “zone out” and not participate actively in the discussion and writing.  I think that my last class of 3rd graders may have provided me with a way to avoid that however. 

Category: Elementary, Tech Integration, blogging, music  2 Comments
Apr
29

saving takes time

Brenda Muench

You’d think after 12 years of teaching I would remember how looooooong it takes to do things on the network with my 1st graders.  But sometimes I forget.  You see, my kids are really good at finding their favorite links on my Delicious page or at using Groovy Shapes on the SmartBoard.  So when we were working on saving our own copy of a file to the networked music folder I thought 5 minutes of the 20 minute class ought to be plenty of time to get everyone’s file saved.  But I forgot that we’ve NEVER done this before. 

So what ended up happening was that I spent 5 minutes being really stressed out that my first 2 classes couldn’t seem to get the files that they had just created saved into the correct location.  But I’m happy to report that I finally wised up a bit by the third group of first graders! 

With this group before we did any work we saved the file with the student’s name.  First we did it together as a class with me working off the Smartboard.  Then I brought up the folder where everyone’s file should have been.   Any students whose names where in the folder could then proceed to work on their file or they could help their neighbor save into the correct folder.  The key is that no one was allowed to do any work until their name appeared in the folder I had open on the board.  By the end of the class everyone had a file created and that meant that when there was 2 minutes until they had to leave I could just say, “Click the disk to save” because we had already aimed the file into the right folder.  This was much easier and less stressful! 

By the way – my first graders have no idea what a disk is because they’ve never seen disk!  Maybe it’s time to rethink the icon we use to indicate “save”.

Category: Elementary, SmartBoard, learning  Leave a Comment
Jan
15

Impressions of the Flip camera

Brenda Muench

Over Christmas I purchased a 30 minute Flip Video camera.  I  can record 30 minutes of video on the camera before I must download it to my computer.  So far I have used the camera at family gatherings, in my buddy Laurie Rodriguez’s kindergarten classroom and in my music classroom.

Use of the camera couldn’t be any easier.  There’s one large red button you push to begin and end your recording sessions.  There is a red light that glows on the front when you are recording so my kindergarten kids knew when to settle down and focus.  The mic picks up reasonably well.  I often find myself narrating the video as I shoot it.  I found when I use my "teacher voice" to do this the sound quality is poor due to the loudness of my voice as heard in this video.  It’s not horrible but it is something I need to think about.

I will have to work with the kids on speaking up though.  In this video I interviewed 3 of my first grade boys about a rhythm activity we were doing and parts of their speech are too soft to be heard nicely.

I was impressed with how well the camera shows faces in my room with the lights off.  Even with going back and forth between the basically white computer screen to the kids’ faces the camera still captured a decent movie.

Moving the videos from the Flip to my computer was easy on my Dell XPS M1330.  No trouble at all.  I plugged it in and the Flip drivers self installed.  The use interface was easy to figure out and I quickly saved the videos I selected to my computer.  On my computer at school (which by the way was purchased only about 2 years ago) it was a different story.  Upon plugging the Flip in to the USB drive the computer slowed to a crawl and then froze up.  Now let it be known that I have had other issues with this particular machine running programming but I think I would hesitate a bit before expected the Flip programming to work on an older computer.

The Flip Share programming will let you add title and credits slides to your movie and you can do some basic editing from the beginning or end of your movie.  If you want to really do some serious editing then use Windows MovieMaker, the Flip files will pull quite nicely into this program.  I also liked that you can choose to have the Flip Share prepare a set of videos to be posted on the internet.  I know this is basically a repackaged "save as" function but I think it would be really handy for folks who are new to this kind of technology.

What I’d like to try next is to put the camera into the hands of my student to observe how easy or hard it is for them to create a video using the camera.  We’ll see how it goes!

 

 

I find the video to be of decent quality.  I am not bothered by it being too grainy or blurry. 

Category: Elementary, IW, Tech Integration, learning, video  3 Comments
Dec
06

What are your Students Performing at the Holiday Concert?

Brenda Muench

As I was catching up on my Google Reader subscription list this week I came across an entry by Amy M. Burns detailing exactly what her students where performing at this year’s holiday concert.  What a great idea!  It’s another way for me to get some input on what is possible with my elementary kids for the holiday season.  I spent quite a few minutes exploring links and looking up songs after reading her entry.

So it seems fair to me that I should share what we’re doing for our Christmas Concert.  That’s right at our school we really get to call it a Christmas Concert.  I’m teaching in rural Illinois and we have a very homogeneous faith population.  So our concert is Christmas, Christmas and more Christmas.

Kindergarten

Must Be Santa – This song is in our Share the Music textbook.  I’ve tried it one other time with the Kindergarteners and it was a horrible disaster!  This song is a huge exercise in memory for the kids because it’s an add on song.  This year we’ve gotten to the 4 verse successfully.  That’s about 3 more verses than the last time I attempted this song.  The difference this year is that I have a SmartBoard in the room!  I started out making icons for each idea in the song (moon and stars for “special night”, picture of Santa with an arrow to the beard for “beard that’s white”, etc.)  We spent 4 music classes reordering the icons to match the song because strangely my computer kept “forgetting” to save the version we had completed the class before.  The kids love using the Smartboard and were willing to redo this activity for multiple days.  Once we had a handle on the order visually we transfered each icon to a hand motion.  For the kids to be successful singing the song I have to do the next action a few milliseconds before the words for that action starts.  So far it’s working great and the kids are have a great time!

The Turkey Tango – This is one of our songs from a  new book I’m using this year in order to help with the learning of the alphabet.  In Kindergarten they have a letter of the week.  Last year at IMEA State Conference I was introduced to Alphabet Action Songs by Denise Gagne.  It’s a great collection of songs with one for each letter of the alphbet.  I really like that they are written by a music teacher.  Each song has a “dance” that goes with it that fits right in with my focus on steady beat at the Kindergarten level.  This song we are only doing the “dance” to and we’re letting the CD do the singing so we can focus on the fun!

First Grade:

Santa’s Helpers – This song is also from our Share the music text book series.  It is giving the 1st graders an opportunity to play quarter and eighth notes on sticks to the “tap”: and “tap-a” in the song.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer – The last few years I have been really conflicted about teaching this type of traditional Christmas fare.  I felt that it was my job to teach the kids something new that they hadn’t ever heard before.  But I have come to realize that many of my kids really don’t know all the words (or for a few students ANY of the words) to these traditional songs.  That makes sing-alongs at Christmas time very uncomfortable.  These songs are part of our culture and so I have decided this year to include a few.  They kids are really enjoying singing them too!

Second Grade:

The Night Before Christmas – I’ve always loooooved this song.  It’s really wordy but the 2nd graders seem to have it under control.  We have been using the Notebook software that is on our Smartboard to illustrate the various parts of the song.  My hope is that we will use the pictures to create a movie to project on the wall next to the stage while we sing.  I think we will be able to get it done this coming week.  Notebook has a record feature that lets you record what’s happening on the board that we plan on using to make the movie.

The Chipmunk Song – With the Alvin and the Chipmunk movie getting released last year at Christmas I thought the kids would get a kick out of learning this song.

Third Grade:

The Incredible Reindeer by Teresa Jennings- Every year I wonder if it’s time to stop doing a mini musical with the 3rd graders.  It’s soooooo much stress but then I see how excited they are about being elves, reindeer, and the Clauses that I have to do another one the next year.  The music in this one was pretty easy for the kids to pick up on.  Now if I could just figure out an easier way to learn lines that are spread out over 3 or 4 different class sections!!

So that’s what the kids are doing at Iroquois West.  What are you doing at your school?

Category: Elementary  Tags: , , , ,  One Comment