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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
Feb
26

ICE 2010: Podcasting on a PC

Brenda Muench

Here’s the link to the page we covered in our session.

I hope you found something you can use.

Category: presentations  Tags:  2 Comments
Feb
22

Sew Yourself a VoiceThread

Brenda Muench

Carol Broos and myself will be presenting on Thursday at ICE 2010. Here’s the link to the presentation wiki:

http://musictechie.pbworks.com/Sew-Yourself-a-Voicethread

https://voicethread.com/#u4672.b569995.i3048124

Category: presentations  Tags: , , , ,  Leave a Comment
Nov
17

Skype: Helping Piano Students Compose

Brenda Muench

I have a piano student who is a Freshman in high school this year. She’s been playing piano for at least 5 years now. Rebekah has a real love of music. She’s developing an ear for classical and jazz but I worried that perhaps she was becoming too attached to the written notes. I needed to push her use her ear as well as her eye. So we began working on simple hymns for church. I showed her how to read the guitar chords in the music and taught her some basic patterns to create simple accompaniments to the melody line. This was becoming a great project to review the grand cadence, transposing and key signatures! So we decide to take 3 songs and make an arrangement to play for church. It went really well! So we decided to do another one. But this time I felt Rebekah was struggling with the process of blending the pieces together. So I post Rebekah’s initial work on her medley on Youtube and ask for help:

I threw the video link out on Twitter and wonder of wonders the fabulous Mark Brymer contacts me and says he’d like to Skype with Rebekah! Mark and I tweet back and forth to set up the time and date. When the big day arrived Rebekah and I were so excited!

Our Skype with Mark Brymer Begins:

The 2nd part of our Skype conversation with Mark:

Mark did such a great job of helping to push us over our mental block! I had covered the circle of 5ths with Rebekah when we learned the scales but I had failed to label it as the “Circle of 5ths” for her. And I hadn’t thought to use this concept with her for composing. I already know that our next medley won’t be one where all 3 pieces are in the same key that way she can make some practical use of this new (to her) concept.

Rebekah’s Revised Version:

Even 5 years ago I didn’t have the knowledge to pull something like this together. But now because of things like Skype, Twitter, and my wonderful PLN, students like Rebekah will be blessed with authentic learning experiences! Wow! Amazing!

Category: learning, music  Tags: , , , , ,  Leave a Comment
Sep
29

iPod Touch: Make My Life More Fun!

Brenda Muench

I have recently received a most fabulous gift. An iPod Touch!! Today I’m going to continue this series with some of the apps have made it into permanent rotation on my device after a few months of using it. Today’s areas of focus are………

Sometimes I Hate Math

Sale Price – With this app I can figure out what’s the price of an item that was 40% off and then another 50% off the first sale price. LOVELY!

CheckPlease Lite – I can split the check 4 ways and figure out tip. Then have the amount go straight into Pocket Money (my checkbook program). I have only used this a few times but I really like the concept.

 

Fun Stuff

Geosphere (paid) - I am a geocacher. I was looking for an app that would let me carry all my cache information with me. Also I wanted to log my caches and upload them when I got back to an area with wifi. Geosphere lets me to both. Plus the app just looks really slick.

Flashlight – I have actually used this one! It’s literally just a white screen. Works great!

Splat! – Swatting flies by rocking the iTouch forward. Even my 5 year old niece likes this one.

iDork Lite – Draw lines on the screen to get your stick dude to move to the hole in the paper but be careful of falling pencils or you’ll just be a bloody splat on the page!

SnapWords – Each team gets a turn to get their members to say a set of words before time runs out. After 3 or 4 words you get a difficult word. Difficult words often prompt, “uhhhhhhhhh” and then some creative thinking! This one is great for long car rides with older kids or adults.

WordFlipper – Use the letters to make as many long words as possible before time runs out.  I love this kind of game!

Category: learning, tech gadgets  Tags: , , , , , , , ,  Leave a Comment
Sep
22

iPod Touch: Help Me Stay Connected!

Brenda Muench

I have recently received a most fabulous gift. An iPod Touch!! Today I’m going to continue this series with some of the apps have made it into permanent rotation on my device after a month of using it. Today’s area of focus is………

Social Networking

Tweet Deck – I used this program already on my laptop to help me get my twitter account into a more manageable beast. I have found so many people that I can learn from on Twitter but the amount of tweets that would appear between each of my log ons was more than I could ever look at and still have a life. Also I was missing important tweets from my music educator buds.  Tweet Deck has fixed that for me.  I have organized the people I follow into groups: teachers, music teachers, local friends, and everyone else.  I read the music teachers column every day and I scan the teachers group daily. If I have time I can scan the rest of my columns or I can just mark them all as seen and go on with my day.

Plurk – Plurk is much like Twitter for me but the conversations are deeper as the community is smaller. The threaded conversations also make it much easier to keep track of who commented on what topic.

Facebook – The Facebook app is paired down from the regular site but everything I need is here.  I can check my mail, see who’s left something on my wall and chat. Plus using this version keeps me from wasting hours on the actual site.

Bump – I’ll be honest about this one. I haven’t actually used it yet. But the idea intrigues me.  So I’ve got it set up and ready to go. I’ll let you know cool it is once I get to a tech conference where more people are likely to have it on their iPhone.

Textfree Lite – This is my answer to all my friends who like to text me. I know it’s hard to believe that a techie girl like me wouldn’t have a text plan but it’s something I’ve never really had much use for in life. I’m finding however that all my buds who have teenage kids are really attached to texting and sometimes they text me even though I don’t have any text plan on my phone. So I thought this app might fix my problem.  There are some limitations though. I can only send 15 texts each day but I can receive an unlimited number of texts. But here’s the real kicker: People who want to text me can only reply to my texts for there to be no charge to my phone account. That’s a pain. I’ve considered buying the paid version but so far haven’t taken the leap.

Category: learning, tech ed, tech gadgets  Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,  Leave a Comment
Sep
09

I’m REALLY uncomfortable! I must be learning….something.

Brenda Muench

Every year there’s something that just floors me and is SOOOOO huge that I just want to take a nap and hope it goes away. During my first few years of teaching it was getting an elementary Christmas Concert together. Then a few years later it was pulling the high school musical together. Then a few years after that it was starting up my classroom website.  This year it’s getting our district technology plan together.  All of these things are so overwhelmingly large!!!! There are so many different directions they could go. So many ideas to consider. So many people to organize. It all makes my head spin. 

You see, I’m a detail girl and large projects often have more details than I can wrap my head around. So I pick an area and start to focus. Often in the first year of tackling a project I end up going back and re-doing something I thought I completed early on because I didn’t quite have a strong grasp of all the variables. When I began the  elementary Christmas concert I didn’t realize how much time it would take to get 1st graders to sing a song with 4 verses nicely.  I moved on to the 2nd verse too quickly and had to go back a re-teach the first verse after the 3rd verse. When I did the high school musical I didn’t plan for costumes early enough and had to spend quite a few afternoons (before rehearsal) driving around the countryside looking for dresses from the local theater companies. This year with the tech plan I’m so new that I don’t even know what I’m doing wrong YET but I sure I’ll find something shortly.

I need to learn to accept that I can’t do everything right the first time every time. I find myself thinking, “I’ve been an educator for 14 years now. I should know how to do all this stuff – even if it’s brand new to me.” Just like I remember thinking, “I should know how to plan a Christmas Concert! I’ve been learning this for the last 4 years of college!” during my first year of teaching. Maybe the underlying thought here for me is more along the lines of: “I’m pretty smart, I can figure most things out. Why isn’t this easier!?!”

So this feeling right here, this feeling of frustration, unpreparedness, anger, and confusion, this feeling is one I need to remember. I feel like I’m doing this all by myself and there’s no one to help. Even though there are lots of people I can ask questions, I don’t even know which questions to ask them! I need help but I don’t know what help I need. So I just need to get busy so I can find the questions to ask.  But I’m still really angry that this is the best way to go about this for right now – it’s messy and non-linear and seems like it might possibly be a total waste of my time.

That feeling right there is how my students students feel when I ask them to research a composer or try to find their singing voice.  That’s how my fellow teachers feel when they get a new tool like a Smartboard or a projector. That’s how my administration feels they learn about a new tool like a blog or a wiki.

So folk,s when I say I know how you feel…..I really mean it. I understand that anger and frustration but we have to push through it to get to the other side. I’ll keep putting one foot in front of the other in the areas I’m struggling with and I’ll do my best to support you as you do the same.  And when it’s all said and done we’ll both be better educators and learners because of it.

Category: IW, Tech Integration, Uncategorized, learning  Tags: , ,  One Comment
Aug
12

iTouch: Help Me Get More Organized!

Brenda Muench

 

I have recently received a most fabulous gift. An iTouch!! Today I’m going to start with some of the apps have made it into permanent rotation on my device after a month of using it. Today’s area of focus is………

Life Management

Pocket Money Lite – This is the app I settled on to keep track of my checking account. A few months before I got my iTouch I also opened my first debit card. (I know, I know, I’m late to this game.  I don’t text either. More on that in another entry) It was so frustrating to me to have to write down in my checkbook register all those withdrawals via my debit card. Why did I have to record something with a pen and paper that was happening digitally? Even more frustrating for me is that my rural bank, which has been very good to me, does not have internet banking.  ARG! Add to this that I recently started looking for a replacement for my beloved Microsoft Money and you’ve got one frustrated techie! Enter my iTouch and Pocket Money Lite and I am again one peaceful techie. My techie transactions are now completely techie!

CardStar – I have to be honest about this one. I love the concept but I haven’t yet had a business that could get the barcode to scan off my iTouch. I’m keeping CardStar because even if the barcode doesn’t scan the numbers off the code can still be typed in by the clerk. This means that I still don’t have to carry around all those pesky membership cards and that is HUGE!

WordPress –I can blog from my iTouch!! Need I say more? And this will motivate me to get better at typing with my thumbs. :)

Grocery Gadget ($4.99) I loved my grocery list. Just ask the hubs! This app means that I know how much I’m going to spend before I even get to the check out and I can budget more easily. The process to add things to the list is really easy and it’s customizable. Shopping is easy as each item gets moved down to the bottom of the list after I mark it off. I do wish there was a way to mark items that I have coupons for though. Right now I’m making notes on each individual item but I have to go back and erase the notes each week as I clear the list.

CalenGoo ($6.99) I LOOOOOOVE my Google Calendar! Now I finally have access to it when I’m not online and it syncs when I get back to area with wifi. Oh and I can still keep all my other calendars too.  I can see mine, Mom’s, Carol’s, and IW’s. All these in its full color coded glory. Have I mentioned I love being color coded? I do!!

Next time: iTouch: Help Me Stay Connected!

Category: free, learning, tech gadgets  Tags: , , , , , ,  One Comment
Aug
05

From My Bag of Excuses: No Star Spangled Banner

Brenda Muench

 

I’ll admit it.  I haven’t taught my elementary kids to sing the National Anthem for many years. Please refrain from calling me un-American.

In my early days as a music teacher I thought I was my civic duty to teach ALL my kids to sing the Anthem. I tried really hard. Surely I thought by the end of 3rd grade everyone should know all the words and be able to sing a lovely rendition of our National Anthem. But after 3 years of hearing my first graders struggle with words like ramparts and twilight and listening to my 3rd graders strain to hit the high notes correctly or, even worse, just switch to a lower key in the middle of the song, I gave up. It was a hard choice to make. I love our Anthem. I have so many great memories of singing it in my High School chorus and singing it solo during many sporting events starting in 6th grade.  But our National Anthem is hard – it’s hard to sing because the range is very large and because the words aren’t ones commonly used today. Actually language is a problem I have with teaching many patriotic folk songs to my students. “Amber waves of grain” creates some beautiful imagery but 1st graders just don’t get it!

Now please don’t misunderstand me.  I’m not saying I CAN’T teach my elementary kids to sing our Anthem. I am saying that perhaps that particular song isn’t one that developmentally appropriate for students this age.  I DID manage to teach all my k-3 students the whole entire Anthem in those first 2 years of my career. It wasn’t a pretty process and I’m not sure it was the best use of the few educational minutes I’m being given each year. What I’m saying is I won’t teach my k-3 students the Anthem. I’ll discuss with them the proper behavior when it’s sung. I’ll expose them to multiple listenings of different recordings it but I won’t require that they can sing it.

When DO I think students are ready to learn the anthem? For my program the Middle School Chorus was a great time to learn it. Mastering the Anthem was a great beginning of the year project. Those students are ready to understand the vocabulary and learn the proper technique for singing a song a wide range. Doing this song at the beginning of the year also presented the group with many opportunities to model and discuss proper breathing, phrasing, consonant and vowel formation. These are all things that needed to be discussed early and often anyway! Plus I got the opportunity to do a little range testing  when each chorus member came to sing the song for me solo for the test. When I started to teach it at this level instead of the elementary the process was much smoother. And the kids enjoyed it! They have a better understanding of why learning this song is important.

I have a feeling that unearthing things in my “Bag of Excuses” is going to become a regular series on this blog.  What’s in your bag?

Category: Excuses, learning, music  Tags: , , , , ,  One Comment
Jul
18

Mentor Training Day 1

Brenda Muench

 

It’s the first day of our 4 and half day mentor training. Once again I’ve been handed a copied BINDER (a really huge one) of all the Powerpoint slides to be used in the presentation for the day.  I wish, wish, wish more people knew how to post their Powerpoints online using Slideshare or even just posting the whole file to a webpage.  I’m certain that I will probably not look at most of these slides again as the year progresses. 

Now on to the pros of this day so far!  I’ve been forced to go back and think about my own first year of teaching.  It’s been awhile.  What I most remember is feeling completely overwhelmed and disconnected.  Being a music teacher is hard because often there is only one of us in a building.  So who do you talk to about what’s going right and wrong in your room?  But what I’ve discovered today is that even if there are 4 other teachers of your variety in your building there is still a pretty high chance you will feel isolated unless someone in your group makes a concerted effort to include you.  No wonder we need a mentoring program!!! So there are things I need to do this year to help make my protégés’ first and second year easier to navigate. First I need to make sure they know where all their stuff is and where they can go to get supplies that they may be missing. Part of my job will be to help them make connections in all the buildings they work in.  I do think I’ll have many problems with anticipating their needs but I might have issues being forward enough to let them know when I begin to see things going awry. I can tell this is going to be a year for learning for all parties involved!

Category: learning  Leave a Comment
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