General music teachers are bringing ukuleles into their classrooms now more than ever! And many of you are like me, and never really played the ukulele before bringing it into your classroom. And although I’m not a huge fan of
Soundscapes with Listen to the Rain
This is my second book recommendation this month! With no singing allowed under strict covid-19 restrictions, I’ve been diving into more books. Bill Martin, Jr.’s Listen to the Rain provided a great backdrop for my Pre-Kindergarten classes to explore all
Recorders—at school or at home
Despite many jokes about children playing the recorder, music teachers know that the recorder is an accessible first step towards playing other instruments. It can be difficult for a small child to play a melodic instrument. String instruments require left
Setting up a Sound Exploration Station
Every music teacher knows how much students just want to experiment (make lots of noise) when they come into a room full of instruments. As people, this probably drives us crazy, but as teachers, we should rejoice in the enthusiasm
Up Close and Personal with the Instruments
I stumbled across this and just had to share. The Netherlands Philarmonic played Peter and the Wolf with GoPro cameras on several of the instruments, and put together this fantastic video! The camera on the trombone was my favorite. This
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
Time to Invest in Post-Its
After a number of years in PYP, most teachers lose track of how many Post-Its they have used: in workshops, in meetings, and hopefully also in class. I used to roll my eyes when those little yellow packs would come
Inquiry: Musical Cycles
Following a previous post, someone asked about our inquiry into cycles. The main inquiry point is that the layering and varying of simple musical patterns can create a complex sound, and that this cycling technique is used in several musical
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
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,