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Thoughts from a PYP music teacher

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Composing with Body Percussion

It’s a frustrating thing the day you realize that your Grade 4 students are still confusing beat and rhythm, and that they don’t read rhythms quite as well as you imagined they should. I dare say—and feel free to challenge

Janine 11. January 201626. July 2020 Group activity, Inquiry, Unit No Comments Read more

Developing New Units: Kindergarten

As I wrote in this post… A while back, our school put the entire How We Express Ourselves theme into the hands of the Arts teachers. In a lot of ways, this was a fantastic idea. (And in just as

Janine 10. October 2015 Unit 2 Comments Read more

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

Janine 15. May 20155. July 2015 Inquiry, Unit No Comments Read more

Developing New Units (PreK)

Once in a while I try to clean up my computer—call it “spring cleaning,” I guess—and this time around I’ve stumbled upon loads of interesting things that I’d mostly forgotten about. As I clean up, I’ll be rolling out the

Janine 18. March 20155. August 2015 Unit 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

I Wanna Dance with Somebody!

Yes, I am a child of the eighties. I am also at a school with no dance in the curriculum, and I gather that many PYP music teachers are in similar situations. And whether or not there is a qualified

Janine 1. December 20149. August 2015 Group activity, Inquiry, Unit No Comments Read more

An Inquiry Into…the Instruments

Nearly everyone does a unit on the instruments of the orchestra, but there are as many approaches as there are music teachers. I’ve probably approached it in ten different ways in as many years within my own program. In my first

Janine 27. November 20149. August 2015 Assessment, Inquiry, Unit, Whole class activity No Comments Read more

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