Recycled Instrument Project

The time between Spring Break and the end of the year tends to make kids antsy, and a solid month of standardized testing certainly doesn’t help. I save my favorite projects for this time of year, so kids have enough motivation to not completely lose their minds when April and May come around.

One of my all-time favorite projects is creating instruments. Since 5^th grade is supposed to study world instruments, we use those as a model for creating our own.

First, we watch and listen to world instruments, discuss how they are made, and brainstorm how we could make our own. I break it down by instrument family. Here is a list of the instruments we studied this year:

• Woodwind: Shakahachi (Japan), pan flute (Native American), bagpipe (Scotland), arghul (Egypt) and ghaita (Middle-Eastern)
• Brass: Tibetan Long Horn (Tibet)
• String: Koto and Shamisen (Japan), kora (African), inanga (Rwanda), Berimbau (Brazil)
• Percussion: Caxixi (Brazil), Taiko (Japan), Bodhran (Ireland), Talking Drum (West Africa), Djembe (West Africa), Shekere (West Africa), Mbira (West Africa)

We watched several videos on YouTube so we could hear what the instruments sounded like. You can watch the playlist here.

3^rd grade was studying instruments of the orchestra, so we did this exact project but focused on those instruments instead.

Once we had explored how the instruments were made and what they sounded like, we started to create our own. We started with a plan. Students took a plain piece of paper, folded it into four equal rectangles, and followed this format:

• 1.)    I will make a ________. It is in the _________ family.
• 2.)    To make a ______, I will need _________.
• 3.)    Explain each step you will take to create your instrument.
• 4.)    My _____ will look like: (Draw your instrument.)

 

Student examples of the plan.

This allows students to really consider what they will need and how they will make their instrument. I tried this project last year without the plan, and students got so distracted by all the cool stuff that they forgot to use any knowledge they had of how instruments are made. The actual construction of the instruments went much smoother this year, because students had created an exact plan before they could be distracted by giant Cheese Puff containers.

My example instrument: a shamisen made from cardboard, tape, and fishing line.

I sent a mass e-mail to the staff at my school asking for recyclables a few weeks before we created our instruments. Man, did they deliver! I ended up with 5 huge bags of recyclables, more than enough for all the classes.

One of the student instruments, modeled after a ghaita.

I went through the recyclables and sorted them into equal piles for each class. That way, the last class wasn’t left with just the stuff nobody else wanted. When kids came in for class that day, their eyes got huge! It was so fun to watch.

Man did my room get messy! The kids did a great job of cleaning up when they were done, though.

On the day we made instruments, I sent kids to the carpet with all the recycles in small groups and allowed them plenty of time to work on their instruments. We listened to classical pieces we had covered in the background, and the rule was students couldn’t be louder than the music. When students were done, they got to go back to the risers and take an instrument selfie. (Silly, and I’m not sure it was even a selfie since I took the picture, but they were SO INTO IT!)

One instrument that made me laugh out loud was the Minion Caxixi. It was named Kevin.

This project is engaging with a lot of self-direction and creativity. It’s great for any time of the year, but I really love it at the end of the year. This is quickly becoming a tradition, the kids love it, and it’s just as enjoyable for me.

Go forth and make instruments! I hope you have fun!

Chrome Music Lab Ideas, Part Two

This is the second post on how to use Chrome Music Lab in the music classroom. For thefirst post, please click here.

Chrome MusicLab is a wonderful, wonderful thing. I know this is being posted on April 1st, but here's one thing that is no joke: kids love technology, and this allows them to explore music in new and fun ways. Let’s take a look at second half of the Chrome Music Lab experiments.

Melody Maker

The Melody Maker allows you to use colored blocks to create an 8 note melody. You have nearly two octaves to work with, set up in the major scale. This is a great tool for composition. My kids struggle with wanting to make their melodies very random, and the Melody Maker is a great visual way to show skips and steps. You can also click the button to the right of the play button to add an automatically created harmony. This is great to show the difference between one melody and harmony. There is a tempo control as well.

VoiceSpinner

This experiment is a blast, especially if you have your own microphone. Record a very short (about 3 second) blurb, and then you can change the speed of the audio. Move the control to the right and you can hear your sound in slow-mo, or speed it up to chipmunk highs. Move the control to the left for the same effects, but your audio will be backwards. It is easiest to show this with instrument examples, but kids LOVE hearing themselves talk like backwards chipmunks.

Harmonics

This is a very simple experiment that explores harmonics both visually and aurally. Click each coil to hear the note. It is cool for kids to be able to see the relationship between the notes.

Piano Roll

This is one of my favorites! It is a simple idea: take famous songs, display them like a piano roll, and play them. Clicking on two buttons allows you to go between a traditional piano sound and a more electronic sound. This is a useful visual if you want to listen to any of the songs. But the option of using your microphone is what makes this experiment genius. Record a short example, and that sound is used as the basis for all the notes. Ever want to hear what Beethoven’s 5^th would sound like entirely on different cow bells or tone blocks? Now is your chance! Vocal sounds can be used too, and they are hilarious. My main advice is to use as low a sound as possible as your recorded example, because the songs get high and screechy if your original sound is high.

Oscillators

Another simple but fun experiment, Oscillators features creatures who open their mouths to show frequencies in certain shapes: square, sawtooth, triangle, and sine (waves). The current frequency is always shown. You can modify how high or low the sound is by stretching the character up or down. This is another useful way to show high vs. low, and the speed of the waves at different pitches.

Strings

This experiment has a set of 6 strings. 5 of the strings have been divided into 2 sections of different lengths. This is a great way to visually show how the size of a string (or any part of an instrument) relates to pitch. It is also a good opportunity to discuss one way music relates to fractions. Yay for cross-curricular discussions!

Chrome MusicLab is a very fun website, and kids love it enough to look it up outside of school. I’ve had several kids run up to tell me about the melody they got to make at home, or the song they composed the night before that was made entirely of triangles. Chrome Music Lab works as a focused tool to include in a lesson, but also as an opportunity for kids to play and explore. Any site that gets kids curious about music is good in my book!

Hope you and your students have fun with Chrome Music Lab! 

Chrome Music Lab Ideas

This month a lovely, lovely gift was given unto music teachers: Chrome Music Lab. It celebrates Music in Our Schools Month with 12 musical experiments that explore music and sound. All of them would work as rewards earned by a class or when you have an extra minute, but most of them could also be used to teach certain concepts. Let’s explore how you can use these in the classroom, starting with the first 6 experiments.

Start experimenting with the Chrome Music Lab here.

Rhythm

This experiment involves cute cartoon characters playing non-pitched percussion. There are four options: 3 beats, 4 beats, 5 beats, and 6 beats. (The beats are represented by the dark grey lines, and the off-beats are in between them.) Below the characters, you can three sounds for each with iconic notation, and the pattern repeats. This is great for teaching rhythmic ostinato, since you have limited options with iconic notation and an automatic loop. This could be used as a composition tool, with kids composing on the board and then playing along (pause it if you want a different tempo.) You can also use it to teach 3/4, 4/4, 5/4 and 6/4 time. This could even be tied into quarter note, quarter rest, and eighth notes.

Spectrogram

Kids love to see visual representations of music, and the spectrogram is great for that. It charts the frequencies visually, so kids can see what sounds look like. Several pre-recorded options are listed like birds, flute, and a drums machine. You can also control the spectrogram with a mouse, or record a sound to see what it looks like. This is a great visual representation for high and low as well as loud and quiet (the colors change with volume).

Chords

A keyboard with a 2 octave range is used to display chords. A toggle allows you to choose if the chord is major or minor. This is great to showcase how chords and built, as well as the difference between major and minor chords. I am excited to use this when we first learn I IV and V chords.

Sound Waves

Another visual representation of sound, this experiment features a 2 octave keyboard tied to a screen representing sound waves. Zoom in to see the wave as a line, and zoom out to see the air molecules moving as sound travels through them. Kids can visually see the difference between high and low sounds.

Arpeggios

A circle of 5ths allows you to control which chord is arpeggiated. A toggle on the left allows you to switch between harp and piano, and the metronome button allows you to set a tempo. This is great for chords. Just pressing the letter (without pressing play) will result in a rolled chord, and changing arpeggios allows students to experience chord progressions in a different way. This could also be used to differentiate between major and minor. This experiment goes nicely with the Chords page.

Kandinsky

Kandinsky was an artist well known for creating art based on music he heard. Taking it one step farther, this experiment turns what you draw into sound. Some shapes (circle, rectangle, pentagons) turn into singing characters complete with cute eyes and mouths, some (triangle, heart) turn into non-pitched percussion sounds, and most (lines, scribbles, stars, etc.) turn into various pitches. Sometimes you have to draw a shape a very certain way to get a particular sound. Pitch-wise, do through sol (with a high do) are used, depending on where you put your drawing. You can change the timbre by clicking on the button to the right of the play button. You have three options: blue/green synth sounds, pink/purple pitched percussion, and orange/yellow orchestral sounds. This is my favorite one so far. The kids just adore making sounds come alive with various shapes. This is also a great composition tool for primary kiddos, though I feel like my 5^th grade boys could have done this for hours. I probably HAVE done this for hours by now, and I have no regrets.

One particularly genius thing about Chrome Music Lab is it works on tablets and phones as well as computers with no need for an app, you can do it right in the browser. That means these could be incorporated into computer time or a tablet station. It also makes it easier for kids to access these as home, since not everyone has a computer but most have some type of mobile device.

Check back soon for ideas on how to use the other 6 experiments.

I hope you and your kids have a blast with these! 

Music Classroom New Year's Resolutions

New Year’s resolutions have always seemed a bit silly because January feels mid-year to me. However, this can actually be a really good opportunity. Eventually, every single one of us will have one of those years where September to December feels absolutely brutal, and resolutions can be a fantastic way to refocus for the craziness that is January to May. Below are three resolutions for my classroom this year.

Resolution One: Find more projects that I’M excited about

My school has expanded by about 100 kids this year, and since we have a pretty high ratio of kids moving in and out, roughly half of my school is new. That is much higher than I’ve had in the past. Coupled with a new and more restrictive (but better organized) curriculum that dictates which quarter to teach which standards and accompanying assessments that determine pay, at times the first semester felt more like checking boxes on a check list than actually creating authentic opportunities for kids to make music. That isn’t what anyone needs. I could try to find things to make the kids happy, but it can be hard to tell what that will be. So this semester, I’m only doing projects and pieces that make ME geek out. If I don’t flap my arms like a weird little happy bird when I think about doing it four times in four days, it’s a no-go. At the very least, my enthusiasm will help the kids get engaged as well.

If I'm not Cheese Doodles Guy excited about something, I'm just not doing it.

Resolution Two:Purposeful Professional Development

Closely related to the first resolution is to be more purposeful in my approach to workshops. It’s tempting to go to a convention or Orff/Kodaly workshop and be the dog from Up: Look, a (Hop Old) Squirrel! Look at this cool activity! And this one! And this one!

I have a bad tendency to get too excited about everything and when it comes to actually taking things back to my classroom, using my same old safe stuff. Especially at a convention, it is tempting to hop around gawking instead of purposefully looking at one or two things from a session you can bring back immediately. Not something to do once your kids have the Orff (or Kodaly) approach down better, not once you have some time to build up knowledge of this or that standard, but the very next Monday.

My goal for the convention coming up in a few weeks is to find 3 things-pieces, activities, classroom management strategy, whatever works-to implement in my classroom right away. My goal for the next Orff workshops is to find one thing to implement immediately for every workshop. I’m also taking an Orff Level this summer, so finding things I can use right away will be a priority as I go through the classes.

Resolution Three: Know when to pre-plan and when to walk away

Stress happens to the best of us, and I will freely admit it’s gotten the better of me at times this year. But I know myself, and I know that when I get too stressed and try to work through it, the result just isn’t as good. I get sloppy and grumpy. So instead of stressing and driving myself crazy, I want to try to do my best to stay ahead of the game and pre-plan so I can leave at a decent time with decent brain power (not to mention a decent mood).

I have Programs coming up in late February and May, so one task for the teacher work day will be to print off my parent notice letters and send them to the print shop. I use templates from years past, so there’s no excuse for procrastinating. I also want to have the program itself done and printed for both programs as soon as possible.

Motivation, in case you need it. :)

What are your teacher resolutions this year?

Word Wall Update

I completely revamped my room this year, with a focus on posted vocab. My school is focusing on using academic language in class, so word walls are required. I like most of my room, but as the year has gone on I’ve liked the front and back vocab walls less and less. Students weren’t really using the giant word wall at the back, and because expression was at the front of the room they used those words for EVERY answer, regardless of what we were studying. I think the sheer number of words at the back was intimidating, and students plain forgot that it could be a resource.

So, new solution: new word wall! I re-used my words from the front of the room and made accompanying vocab cards for all the concepts we have covered so far. Stars are posted next to the concepts we are currently work on so students can focus in on them quickly. I’ll have to switch out some words in January, but I’m hopeful kids will use this new word wall more.

Here's the old word wall:

And the new word wall:

Do you use word walls at your school? What do yours look like?

Candy Rhythms

Candy is a relevant topic for my kids any day all the time, but right after Halloween candy is all they want to talk about. I decided to use that to my advantage with a connection to rhythm.

My district is really pushing for essential questions in the classroom. For this lesson, I actually really liked using one. I put this question on the board: “How does rhythm relate to language?” We discussed it, and at first the main answer I got was a shrug. Then we talked about rap and hip-hop using words with rhythms, which blew their minds. It was a good hook for when we entered into the candy rhythm activity.

The manipulatives were pretty easy to make. I found images of several popular candies, printed them out, and had them laminated. The best part about this is I can use the same manipulatives in several different ways. Here are the four I am using, but I am sure there are more. If you use something similar in a different way, I would love to know!

1.) Partner work, notating rhythms

After reviewing previous rhythms, we took candies and assigned rhythms to them. If you like, you could give each candy an assigned rhythm. I wanted to up the rigor, so kids were welcome to use whichever candy they wanted as long as each syllable of the word was represented. Kit-Kat, for example, could be both paired eighth notes and a dotted quarter/eighth rhythm.

Once kids had the idea, we decided on a candy as a class and students decided which rhythm they wanted with the candy. They then notated those rhythms. After being comfortable with working on the same rhythm as a class, kids created their own rhythms with their partner and performed them for another group.

Here is an example of a page from my SMART file for this activity. 

2.) Guided identification

For first grade, rhythms are still a fairly new concept so candy rhythm was a bit more structured and guided. We started with using the smart board to make connections between syllables and note heads (yeah cross-curricular!) and matching rhythms to candies. Then, we added manipulatives. Students used a sorter with definitions to sort tiny quarter notes, eighth notes, and quarter rests. We then used those rhythms to match them to the correct candy. The kids LOVED this activity. They were eerily well behaved with bubbles in their mouths the whole class so they had more time for "the candies". My latest formal observation happened to fall during this lesson, and my admin loved it too.

A page from the SMART file.

3.) Rhythm Flash Cards

I have a GIANT pile of rhythm flash cards, so this allows students to start with the rhythm and find a candy to match. There are several answers to each card, so students enjoy comparing with a partner and checking each other’s work.

4) Composition/Performance Task

Since we already use the manipulatives to help us identify rhythms, using them as tools for composition is a natural transition. Students are given some parameters (time signature, how many beats, required rhythms, and so on) and complete their composition alone or with partners. Once the rhythm can be completed with clapping, students move their composition to a non-pitched percussion instrument of their choice.

My district is also big on performance tasks, and this activity can absolutely fit the bill. If you would like to approach this as a performance task, here is a sample scenario (feel free to switch out any specific to work for you):

A candy store has hired you to create a chant for a commercial using the names of popular candies. You will create an eight beat chant in 4/4 time using the names of at least four candies. Your rhythm must include at least one dotted quarter/single eighth OR one triplet. You can also use whole notes, dotted half notes, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes wholes rests, half rests, or eighth rests. You may perform this rhythm using body percussion or non-pitched percussion. Your chant will be recorded so it can be sent to the candy store CEO for approval.

Here it is all pretty:

Looking for more ideas for rhythm? There are several in this post.

Hope you found a delicious idea to take back to your classroom!

Lit Lesson: A Spooky Story

Halloween is such a cool opportunity to make awesome, spooky music with children. It’s always one of my favorite times of the year! It’s also conference month, which means we always end up with a week of weird schedules and half-days. It can be hard to find a lesson that is engaging but also enrichment. Spooky books are a great solution. We try to stay away from things that are exclusively Halloween and do spooky things instead, so all students can participate. Last year, the kids hada blast with the Bill Martin Jr/Eric Carle book A Ghost Story. This year, we are exploring another Bill Martin Jr. book: A Spooky Story.

The book, the cards I use to help students remember their character, and a few of the instruments kids commonly choose.

This book is a very formulaic counting book. “Out of the shadows, out of the flum,” is followed by a number of spooky characters including a cat, witches, skeletons, and werewolves. The end of the book has those characters doing several things like wailing and turning, and we use that as an opportunity to crescendo. The characters finally go back into the flum, a good opportunity for a decrescendo.

Inevitably, a kid always asks, “What is flum?” Because the author made it up, kids use context clues to decide what exactly the flum is. Usually kids decide it is some kind of home world or portal for the spooky characters. Yay cross-curricular opportunities!

We begin by reading the book a few times, until the kids can identify the form of the book. We then add in D and F on tone bars to lay a spooky, minor sound blanket over the story. Students choose instruments for “shadows,” “flum,” and each of the 10 characters. This is a great way for students to explore instruments they don’t get to play very frequently like the ratchet, the thunder tube, and my piano. It’s also good practice to model the correct way to choose an instrument to fit a theme or character. My kids are always tempted to choose an instrument just because they like it, not because it is the best choice for the sound they want. So we go over the fact that we may love the bell tree because it sounds like Tinker Bell, but it’s probably not be the best choice for a spooky werewolf.

Students play through the book several times, switching instruments each time. I have cards for each of the characters so they don’t forget who they are. One student also serves as the narrator and reads the book. When the kids are ready, we record. Kids get very excited about sending a recording to their teacher, and beg me to play it for the kindergarteners to see if it scares them. You could very easily have kinder classes choose the spookiest recording.

Hope you have a spooky time with this fantastic book!