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Grade 2

5 Great Circle Games from Around the World

As I wrote last week, I love to play singing games with my classes. Not only are they fun and catchy, but they offer a lot of teachable content. It’s up to you what you want to pull out, but

Janine 9. February 20182. April 2018 Group activity, Song, Whole class activity No Comments Read more

5 Great Circle Games for Your Music Class

Singing, games, and holding hands! I love playing circle games with my kids. And my kids love playing them. They love the catchy melodies, the movement, and the challenge: For some games, that’s the challenge of doing the right thing

Janine 4. February 201827. March 2018 Group activity, Song, Whole class activity 2 Comments Read more

Inquiry into Pitch

I’ve just started a sound exploration unit in Grade 2, focusing on pitch (and later, duration and dynamics). Last week was an introduction week, where the students tried singing from graphic notation. What began as the same up-and-down siren sound

Janine 21. January 20161. December 2016 Group activity, Inquiry No Comments Read more

The Listening Walk, Part III: Following a Score

Now that the students had inquired into how they could make their observed environmental sounds into musical sounds (inspired by Paul Showers’ The Listening Walk; see my Part I and Part II posts), we took it a step further. We visualized the

Janine 30. April 20159. August 2015 Group activity, Inquiry, Performance 2 Comments Read more

The Listening Walk, Part II: Making Sounds into Music

Following our inquiry into environmental sounds (inspired by Paul Showers’ The Listening Walk), we explored how that might translate into music. Sitting together as a class, a few students shared some of the sounds they had drawn/written in their journals,

Janine 24. April 201521. July 2015 Group activity, Inquiry 4 Comments Read more

The Listening Walk, Part I: Exploring Sounds Around Us

My Kindergarten classes have been exploring sounds, and an unexpected discussion led us in an interesting direction: How do the sounds in our environment inspire us as musicians? Cue The Listening Walk by Paul Showers, illustrated by the fantastic Aliki.

Janine 16. April 201526. July 2020 Inquiry No Comments Read more

Composing with Legos

Legos are great for so many reasons. But this year I discovered one more. The most basic LEGO Duplo bricks come in lengths of 2 and 4, which is perfect for all the work we do with 4/4. This wasn’t new

Janine 27. February 201529. October 2015 Group activity No Comments Read more

Settling In

I have been in schools before where the classroom teacher quietly leads their class, single file, to Music. But more often than not, my classes now come running in, still engrossed in the conversation they had started on their way

Janine 30. January 20151. October 2015 Inquiry, Uncategorized, Whole class activity No Comments Read more

Expression and the Elements of Music

In Grade 2, I do a focus on the elements of music, reviewing many familiar terms (tempo, dynamics, pitch) and introducing new musical terminology as well. It’s the common PYP cycle of analysis and synthesis: We break the music down

Janine 14. December 20149. August 2015 Group activity, Inquiry, Unit 2 Comments Read more

Do the Locomotion

I went through a big overhaul of my curriculum recently, digging deep into cooperative groups, more creative composition, and authentically student-led inquiry. I was well into it, however, when I stopped to reflect and realized that movement—which had once been

Janine 8. December 201422. March 2018 Group activity, Whole class activity No Comments Read more
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