Melodic Stations

I tried out some more stations this morning and I think we're off to a pretty good start! I guess my 2nd graders are my guinea pigs this year for stations since they are (again) the grade level for this lesson.

Since we recently learned re and completed the pentatone of do-re-mi-so-la, I thought some melodic stations were in order. These were much more challenging to plan though, since melody is a lot more difficult to work on independently (if accuracy of pitch and contour is your goal!). I also wanted a variety of activities, of course, that highlighted reading, writing, listening and singing. Here's what I came up with:

Station #1: Step, Skip or Leap?
This was an interactive PowerPoint game that I made for the projector. The group had to work together to determine whether the notes were a step, skip or leap apart. The game told them whether their answers were correct or incorrect and they could try again if they were wrong. Edited to remove PPT....it had tons of mistakes that my 20th group found....hmmmm, makes me think the others weren't quite paying attention?!? Ugh. I will replace it soon once the mistakes are all found.


Station #2: What Does the Fox Box Say?

Okay, okay. Cheesy pun. (Hey, the kids loved it and my station sign!) This is my low-tech station. I recently ordered some Talk Blocks (or music boxes, as I call them) from School Specialty. I took a chance on them and while the sound quality is not great, they get the job done. My son helped me prep this station and we had fun doing it! What I really like about them is that you can insert directions or pictures into the top of them and then record 30 seconds of sound. (There are cheaper ones that have no picture inserts and about 10 seconds of recording time.) I have ten of them so I split them up into two different groups. Five of them were error detection. For example, one was a staff saying "m  r d" but I recorded me singing "d r m" and asked them to explain the difference. The other five were a mixed-up mystery song. I sang "Dinah" into the first one. The other four were me playing the four motives of "Dinah" separately on an instrument. The kids had to put them in order and sing along.

Station #3: Cookie Dough-Re-Mi
Since my new magnetic staves are actually cookie sheets, I came up with the idea of making some notes that look like cookies. I made mine out of little wooden craft circles and printed sticker paper, but you could easily do this by just printing on paper and cutting them out. I stuck magnet tape on the back, made some do clefs, made some solfa sentence strips and they were good to go. (This was something we had already been practicing in class, so writing on the staff was already familiar.)


Station #4: iCan Play Do-Re-Mi
This was the most coveted spot in the room! My coworker has a set of iPads for her classroom and was kind enough to let me borrow a few of them! We used the app Tap and Sing (Storybots) to play some do-re-mi melodies. I just printed out some melody cards and put them on the table, gave them a picture of which robots to tap, and let them practice. This was a bit more practical than using xylophones (which was my back-up plan if the iPads didn't work out) simply because we could plug in headphones and they wouldn't interrupt each other. Plus, the kids are quite motivated by using the technology!



Station #5: The Match Game
In this station, they simply got to work in teams or against each other. They had to turn over one card labeled stem and one labeled staff. If they had the same melody, they kept the match.


As you can tell, again, photography is not my strong suit. I will never understand how all these teacher blogs have such nice pictures! I look like a chicken with my head cut off trying to help kids, keep an eye on equipment (especially borrowed iPads!), making sure Talk Blocks aren't being recorded over, games are played correctly so learning is happening.....pictures obviously are the last thing to happen! :) But these stations went smoothly and we'll continue them for this week and into some of next week due to a (much-needed) holiday this Friday and a state-testing day next week.

What do you do for melodic centers? Leave me a note in the comments!

STOMP

Have you ever thought about making music with brooms? Or with matchboxes? Or maybe a plastic bag? Did you ever look at a person walking on crutches and wonder what that crutch might sound like if you beat on it with drumsticks?

The musical geniuses of STOMP sure have.

My husband, son and I got a chance to see the show at the beautiful Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth yesterday afternoon.

I feel so fortunate to live in an area where incredible venues like this are nearby. Even though I don't get out to see shows and performances often, I certainly enjoy it when the opportunity arises. In fact, funny story....I guess you could say I was so excited to see STOMP that I arrived a week early! I got my dates mixed up and we were over half-way to Fort Worth last Sunday when I double-checked the tickets. Oops....

I was so happy to share this experience with my son. He's almost 9 and has been to a small symphonic performance and a few local theater performances, but has never seen a major production like this. He was a bit grumpy about it at first because we wanted a million pictures (and most looked like this)....

...but was having a great time once it started. I asked what his favorite part was and he said there were too many to list. I have to agree. I was so happy to see we weren't the only parents with a child in the audience too. Though it is a two-hour program with no intermission, it's a perfect introduction to the Broadway musical scene. It's thrilling, entertaining, laid-back and downright fun. The production's take on music is so innovative...I've seen the DVDs many times in the classroom and I was still surprised by what I saw and heard. The talented cast blew me away! 

I wish I could put into words all the (new) lesson ideas going through my head at the moment based on body percussion and sound exploration but I'll have to add those as they develop into actual lessons. In the meantime, enjoy a great scene from the STOMP Live! DVD.

I'll be back in a day or two with some melodic centers that I just made (and I'm very excited to start with second grade) so check back for those. I also did some recordings of 3rd grade improvisations and I'll share that process this week too!

You never know....

This weekend, my husband and I went to see a film in the Dallas International Film Festival. (My husband was a cinematography major in college and went to film school with the director of this particular film.) The plot of "Flutter" centers around a mother and her imaginative young son who suffers from a medical condition. Each time the boy's condition worsens, she soothes him by giving him his medicine and then singing him a lullaby. The moment she started singing, I recognized the song from my Kodaly certification classes. Even though I learned a different variant, it was a version of "All the Pretty Little Horses," a beautiful, haunting melody dating back (possibly) to the time of slavery. Here is the variant that I learned:

Even though I haven't taught this song to my classes in years, I have taught it in the past and I can remember singing it to my son. (I tried any and all lullabies during his marathon crying sessions!) I've always liked it.

I don't know if there is a clip out there of the variant used in the movie, but my wonderful fine arts director (and folk song teacher from my Kodaly class) found this source and the words themselves seem to look a lot more like the ones used in the movie.

Anyway, after the movie was over, the director and all the actors came out for a Q&A. (They were all amazing in this film, and as a fan of Breaking Bad, I'll admit it was really cool to be just a few feet away from Jesse Plemons!) Someone from the audience asked the significance of the song and the director replied that he used it because it was a lullaby. Nothing much else to it besides that. The audience member then added something that I thought was interesting; he said, "One interpretation of that song is that it was about a mother trying to kill her child." This really caught my attention and I immediately felt like this wasn't quite right. I thought he either was trying to give meaning to the plot where there was none....or he was mixing it up with another song. The director didn't know anything about that either (and he did seem to know the history of the song). I remembered learning more along the lines of what the source above says.

I went to my phone and did a little bit of searching but didn't find much to support that idea. (And that's when I asked for some help and was given that previous source.) So that definitely makes me curious...I wish I had seen who asked that question! Where did that information come from? The history and meanings of folk songs can be very elusive, interesting and difficult to pin down. There is always conflicting information depending on the source.

This whole event (though certainly not a matter of life and death or $1M in prize money) reminded me of how valuable my music education has been to me. Who knew that the knowledge of folk music from my Kodaly certification would come in handy while attending DIFF? I felt so nerdy for knowing exactly what they were talking about when I thought I would be lost during an independent film discussion. :)

Do you know anything about the history of "All the Pretty Little Horses" that you can share? What folk song history/meanings do you enjoy sharing with your students?