Lit Lesson: A Ghost Story

Halloween is around the corner, and that means it’s time to make some spooky music! This lesson provides an easy way to tie music to a book, and because the activity is so general you can shape it in several ways to fit in with what you are already learning.

One of my favorite Halloween lessons uses A Ghost Story by Bill Martin Jr with pictures by Eric Carle. Here is the book on Amazon. If you prefer to use Dark Dark Room, that is here. Since it doesn’t exclusively list Halloween, most of my students who don’t celebrate holidays also feel comfortable participating. I usually have something ready for them to do just in case, though.

The book is similar to the common story I remember reading as a kid, “A Dark Dark Room.” It is very formulaic: In a dark dark (noun) there was a dark dark (noun), and in that dark dark (noun) there was a dark dark (noun), so on and so forth. We eventually discover a ghost, who eventually discovers your pocket, and then… HE’S GOT YOU!

This book has so many possibilities! You can compare and contrast major and minor, talk about mood, focus on chords, focus on dynamics and crescendo in particular, really the options are endless.

For the older groups, we play an A minor chord on “dark dark” on tone bars. I allow them to choose what to play when, as long as it is A, C, or E. Students can choose to play the same thing each time, or change it up each time. (Yay for self-differentiation!) With the younger kids I dictate what they play, usually octave As or AC.

Once the kids have the basics down, we decide what we can do to make the book even spookier. My school uses thinking maps, so we use a bubble map at this point to brainstorm. Common choices the kids make include using chimes for the ghost, adding in my bigger drums later in the story, and adding a rainstorm with rain sticks and a thunder tube. I also like to have a few kids play Bb to add dissonance to the A minor chord.

Recording is a must for this book, students love hearing themselves play! I use a cheap plug-in microphone (similar one here) and audacity (free and awesome program, available here) to record class performances. We choose which take we like the best, and send it to their classroom teachers.

I hope you and your students have a blast with this ghost story!

Reasons the Dollar Tree is My Friend (Part 1)

Dollar store loot!

I bet you just hate the dollar store, don’t you?

Nope, me neither.

There is a Dollar Tree right across the street from my school. In fact, it is on my way home. Every day as I drive by it, I have to make a conscious decision NOT to go to the dollar store. Needless to say, I go to the dollar store A LOT. It is a treasure trove for things that I can use in my classroom!



Pool Noodles

Why are pool noodles awesome? Simple: Steady Beat Light Sabers. They are very similar to the steady beat swords featured here. For mine, I decided to go all out and use silver duct tape and electrical tape to make them look like they came from a galaxy far, far away. I use my Light Sabers to teach steady beat to 1^st graders. 3^rd-5^th graders use them as giant batons. Holding something so long in their hands helps them to use their wrists and not conduct like a crazy person.

Foam

The Dollar tree has rolls of foam! Rolls of it! They also have packets of foam. Similar packets or rolls of foam at Wal-Mart cost $5, and who knows what craft stores would charge. Why foam? Why, dear reader, because die-cut machines can cut foam. The foam is more durable than paper, and doesn’t require lamination! I went the paper-laminate-cut route for large quantities of small manipulatives once, and NEVER AGAIN. I learned my lesson! Using foam is so much easier. Students use these shapes to identify the form they hear, or create their own form.

Clinging Shelf Liner

I love this stuff more than I can tell you. A few years ago, my room made me wince with an ugly scarred table, ugly scratched brown file cabinets, and ugly large bright yellow storage boxes. Now those babies are covered, washi taped, and looking good! I used the same kind throughout the room to make it look unified.




Wash-tape

Speaking of washi tape, I found some at the dollar store. This is incredibly exciting to me, since most other places are trying to sell them for $3 a pop. The texture is a bit different, but it still comes off with no residue. Count me in! I’m using washi tape to organize my orffatorium. Each instrument has tape, and the matching mallets have the same kind of tape. Using different colors and patterns also allows me to put kids in groups more interesting than woods and metals.

Stay tuned for another post on awesome things from the dollar store and how I use them!

BONUS: I love these matched cards from the dollar store so much, I wrote an entire post about them. 

Manipulative Monday: Review Cards

One of the battles I constantly fight as a music teacher is forgetfulness. When you see your kids only once or twice a week, it is a battle that will never stop. I don’t want to waste time going over already learned concepts every other second, so we regularly review the concepts already covered.

Every day with intermediate grades, I have two or three review questions on the board so students have a task to focus on as soon as they are in the room. We go over them very quickly, and this does help them to remember concepts. Sometimes, however, students more than one or two questions to make sure they stay on top of previously taught concepts. This is even more true with grades that are about to take summative semester tests. Partner review cards are a great way to help review and keep students engaged.

Can I tell you how much I love the dollar store? I LOVE IT A LOT. There are so many good things you can use as manipulatives, and for a lot less than official manipulatives online or at teacher stores. This summer, I found these beauties at Dollar Tree and stocked up, knowing they would come in handy. They come in packs of 24, so I picked up several of each to be ready for the larger classes.

The game is simple. Students have a card that is either a concept or a definition/example. Students get a card and silently move (I use a musical timer) to find the person who has the accompanying card. For first and second graders, I let them whisper to help students who may not be to the point of silently reading yet. Once students find their partner, they talk for a few moments to make sure they can justify why they think the two cards go together. We check a few groups as a class, and then the students have 10 seconds to trade cards with someone who was not their partner. This sets us up for another round.

Here is a second grade example.

I like this game because it gets kids up and moving, gives them a chance to talk with several partners, and really reinforces previously learned knowledge. I focus on getting students to justify why they chose the answer, really making them think about their reasoning. My school is also focusing on accountable talk, and this activity is a good opportunity for students to practice those skills. This is a great review for any definition-heavy subject as well. I've found this game much more effective than more traditional reviews with paper and pencil.

Have fun with this game, I hope your kiddos love it as much as mine do!

Lit Lesson: Going On a Lion Hunt

Man, my first graders are loving this book! It is very similar to “Bear Hunt” but in a different climate. The African setting sets up good opportunities for students to be on many instruments, including drums.

The plot of the book is simple. Two girls go looking for a lion to hunt, but instead find that they have to go through long grass (swish swash), a lake (splish splash) , a swamp (squish squash), and a cave (tip toe).

I start by reading the book without sound effects, then with them. We review sound effects and how we make them, and then read the story again with sound effects.

The next step is my favorite: taking sound effects to instruments! With kindergartners I just tell them which instrument we should try, or give them a few to choose from. But with first graders, they are on their own.

We look at four categories to determine which instrument we should use:

• Loud or Quiet
• Long or Short
• Wood, Metal, or Other
• Click, Scrape, Ring, Jingle, or Rattle

My district uses thinking maps, so I use a bubble map to get students thinking about how to describe the sound. Then, we find an instrument that fits our map. I like using the map, because it stops kids from choosing instruments just because they are fun. I used to have students who wanted to pick the thunder tube for EVERY sound, because they just liked it so much! This helps to streamline the process and keep kids on track. Once we have instruments for the sounds, we do the book again with sound effects.

  

Map 1 with the sound effect, map 2 with the instrument we choose that fits the adjectives.

Next, we add melody:

I like using a pentatonic melody, but you could easily use the camp song melody.

Eventually, we add in drums to the rhythm of the song. I have the students decide which words should be a bass sound, and which ones should be a tone sound.

This is a great book to do in class, or it can easily be extended to be a program.

I hope your kids enjoy this book as much as I do!

Lit Lesson: Wide Mouthed Frog

I just love this book. The art is fantastic as well!

One of the first things my kindergarteners do when they walk by my room is to point at my instruments and beg to play them. I don’t blame them one bit. That’s what music is when you are 4-5 years old; instruments in your hand, making noise.

Enter a book I recently found at Goodwill and love: The Wide Mouthed Frog! I use the popup version by Keith Faulkner and Jonathan Lambert; you can get it from amazon here. (There is also a similar book here that uses different animals.)

In the book, a wide mouthed frog (who eats flies) meets a bird, a mouse, and a big green alligator. The kids love the pictures, and it is a good opportunity to have them create sound effects. We read the book without sound effects, then read the book again with sound effects to compare and contrast the two versions.

What I use in this lesson: the book, animal cards, and instruments

After students have read the book and know it fairly well, I pass out cards that represent the sound effects we make during the story. The groups I used were the frog, the flies, the bird, the mouse, and the alligator. There is also a giant splash at the end of the story, which I have everyone do. We read the story again, with each group only making sound effects for their animal. This helps minimize mistakes later, when students get instruments.

The next step is instruments. This was the first time my kindie kids had instruments, so we talked a LOT about instrument respect before handing out the goods. J We then did the book with instruments. We do the book several times and switch spots each time, so students have opportunities to try more than one instrument. With the instruments in my room, I use a frog guiro for the frog, shakers for the flies, triangles for the bird, sand blocks for the mouse, and castanets for the alligator.

The final step is to record students playing during the book, and having them listen. Students get so excited! I will also make a big deal of e-mailing the recording to their teachers.

Hope you and your kiddos enjoy this fantastic book!

I love that it all fits in my big blue box!

Using Class Dojo in Music

I love Class Dojo. I love Class Dojo. Have I mentioned that I love Class Dojo? …’Cause I do.

When I saw gen. ed. classroom teachers use the program, I thought it was so brilliant. Instant point system that is easy to correlate to classroom money? An instant record of behavior to show a parent at conferences? Completely free? Rock on!

I love you, little green dude who does flips when the page is loading.

As useful as I could already see that it was, I almost immediately decided that I could never use it. I have over 400 students; keeping track of them all would be a NIGHTMARE. I already used a whole-class incentive system and a compliment system with behavioral differentiation when necessary, how would all that fit in? Nah, cool but not for me.

Over the summer I began to reconsider, and boy am I glad that I did!

It was easy once I realized I could use Dojo as a tracking tool for the class-wide system I already had. I have a “BRAVO” system. When every single student in a class is following my two rules (Respect and participate) they earn a letter. The goal is to earn five letters to spell the word BRAVO in one class. When they do, they earn a certificate and stickers for the school-wide PBS reward system.

This is what it looks like when students earn all 5 letters.

In Dojo, I have each class as their own monster, instead of each student. It is easier to keep track of, and the individual reward systems I already had in place weren’t changed. I post the updated points every Friday afternoon outside my door, so teachers can see how far along their class is. I track the points for a quarter, and reset the points for the new quarter.

Teachers like being able to see how many points students earn, too.

One of the best things about this website is that now I have a way to reward classes for behavior on the long term. The main downfall of my system before was if a class never earned a BRAVO, they never realized how cool it was and didn’t feel motivated by it. But with Dojo, they can earn stickers for every 25 points they earn in total, even if they never get a BRAVO. It allows classes with more behavioral issues to still be motivated by a positive behavioral system. I also allow them, with 50 points, to earn a mini-bravo party and with 100 points, to earn a full bravo party.

A bravo party is when I allow students to choose their own instruments for a full class. (A mini-bravo party is 10 minutes on instruments of their own choice.) Students also get a small treat, like a baggie of fruit snacks, when they leave. I still have objectives and focused teaching, but students get choice and find it to be motivating. I chose this reward because I figured with so little time to teach kids so much music theory, I didn’t have any extra to spare on a free choice day or a pizza party.

Students really seem to like knowing how many points they have, and students K-5 work hard so they can earn another letter/point. It also helps that the art teacher in my building found and loves Dojo too, so they see similar systems in more than one class.

Class Dojo has been a very useful took for me so far. I plan on giving out this certificate each quarter to the class in each grade with the most BRAVO points. I found it here. What a fantastic idea!

This Teacher had such a great idea!

The Summer Of Books

My goal this summer was simple: find as many books for my classroom as possible, for as cheap as possible. Then, find the best way to use those books in class… Preferably BEFORE there are 25 kindergarteners in my room, staring at me their with adorable kindie-kid eyes. (Those eyes are located right above the kindie-honest mouths, AKA motivation to be over-prepared.)

Why not libraries, you ask? I’ve tried them, I really have. I promise. But I’m terrible about re-using books. I will use one book several times a year. When teaching music to K-5, it’s a surprisingly easy thing to do. I will also shamefully admit I’m terrible about returning them in two weeks. I see my classes once a week, and two class periods just isn’t going to be enough if I decide to base a grade’s program on a book. I also happen to really like my school’s librarian, and would prefer not to make her angry with my bad library habits. Plus, buying them now means I can avoid borrowing in the future, so buying books seemed like the best option for me.

Amazon is an amazing place, don’t get me wrong. But I have found that even with no shipping thanks to Prime, the cost of new books adds up quick. So, my first stop was the thrift stores. ALL OF THEM. I went to every thrift store in my city and positively plundered the children’s book sections. I got a lot of dirty looks from moms, and I’m certain a few people thought I was crazy, but a .99 cent book is a powerful incentive. I found books of every kind, and quite a few of them were ones I had never heard of before.

I spent some of my summer mentoring new music teachers in my district, and here is one question I got a lot: What do you look for in a book, and how do you know it will work in your classroom? While digging through piles and piles of categorized books that seemed to be a mix of out-dated Disney characters, books teaching toddlers to say “please” or use the bathroom, and absolutely perfect books for my music classroom, I looked for three main things:

1. Reading Level. Even when using a book with an intermediate grade, I keep to a K-2 reading level. Narration in higher-leveled books can get LONG. I like to have the kids making as much music as possible, and primary books deliver.
2. Repeated structures and refrains. Another great thing about primary level books is they tend to have a lot of repetition. A repeated phrase in the book is an easy opportunity to add a sung refrain, or a chant.
3. Onomatopoeia. Sound effects are huge in my state’s curriculum for K-1, and even for older kids they are very easy to transfer to instruments.

Did I find anything? HECK YES I DID. Eric Carle books, folk tales, short poetry books, you name it. Some of the very specific books I wanted (thanks to Pinterest) weren’t to be found, so I did make a pretty gigantic order to Amazon. But it wasn’t nearly as big as it could have been!

I will be going into more detail about what I do with each book soon. I hope you find a book that makes you do the happy dance!

Here are just a few books recently added to my classroom library!