Music Notes: End of January 2014

Music Notes

January 2014

Hello from the Lannoye music room!

If you check out the Lannoye music blog, you will see a new post with videos from the winter concert! You can relive the concert at lannoyemusic.blogspot.com. Don’t forget to sign up for email updates in the upper right corner, underneath the Lannoye Dragon.

Despite all of the snow days and cold days, we’ve been keeping busy in the music room. Here’s a grade-by-grade breakdown of what the students have been learning:

The kindergarteners continue to practice physically showing the steady beat to songs that we sing by ourselves (like our a cappella welcome song), songs that we sing along to, and instrumental music that we listen to. We do lots of movement to different kinds of music. We’ve continued our pitch matching experiences by singing echo songs, and have moved on to playing student-led pitch-matching games like “Charlie Over the Ocean.”

The 1^st graders have continued working on ta, ti-ti, and rest (quarter note, two 8^th notes, and quarter rest) through clapping, speaking, playing instruments, reading, and writing. They’ve begun learning about composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in addition to creating their own rhythmic compositions.

The 2^nd graders have been reviewing half notes and half rests, and they just added whole notes and whole rests to their rhythmic vocabulary. We’ve played rhythmic games like “Poison,” and singing games that correspond with songs like “Wee Willie Winkie.” Most recently, they’ve begun creating their own rhythmic compositions.

The 3^rd graders have moved on to leading their own body percussion rounds, and they’ve been practicing singing rounds as well. We added a dance to a Hebrew round called “Toombaї.” The students also learned a new rhythm (ti-tiri, along with a sneak preview of tiri-ti, which is a 4^th grade rhythm) and have applied it in different songs and rhythmic sightreading exercises. Most recently, we started moving on to pentatonic scales by doing a short activity exploring different Greek and Latin numeral prefixes, then applying that language (penta- + -tonic) to music.

The 4^th and 5^th graders started their month by reviewing rhythms, rounds, and note names on the treble clef staff. I may have tricked them all into doing a bit of music math with the rhythms we’ve reviewed, especially the dotted ones… In other rhythmic news, the 4^th graders learned how to count rhythms using numbers instead of counting syllables. They’ve practiced this skill using rhythms as small as 8^th notes. The 5^th graders reviewed this skill, added 16^th notes to their number-counting repertoire, and learned a new rhythm (dotted 8^th/16^th note combination). After we reviewed counting and note names, we were ready to move on to recorders! It’s been a bit of a bummer with cold days taking away instruction time, but many of the students have been excited for home practice time.

Happy 2014, and may the polar vortex be over soon!

Ms. Corinne Galligan
(920) 822-0433
cmgalligan@pulaskischools.org
lannoyemusic.blogspot.com