Elementary Music/Music Technology Blog

Over the past few weeks, my first graders have been experiencing dynamics, mainly forte, piano, getting louder, and getting softer, in various ways. I prepared the concept through singing songs loud and soft, performing loud and soft on instruments, and telling the story of Haydn’s Surprise symphony, in which they then listened to the excerpt and acted out the story. I presented the concept by introducing the terminology of forte and piano. We are now in the practice portion of this concept. We are going to be using Sibelius’s Groovy Shapes today to practice forte and piano. The lesson will also touch upon getting louder and getting softer.

Procedure: The school’s IT delivered the Smart Board to my classroom (yeah!) and I hooked up my laptop with Groovy Shapes on it. Before the lesson, I clicked on the Create mode and created a simple four-measure song with bass line tear drops, melody circles, and rhythm squares. I then put the song on the other four computers in the room. When the students entered the classroom, they first were excited to see the Smart Board hooked up (I have to sign it out way in advance). We sat down and sang our hello song and a few other class favorites…currently, Halloween songs. We reviewed forte and piano through singing. The students sat in the front of the Smart Board and I logged in as 1st grade and pressed the Explore button. We performed lesson four, music symbols, together with each student taking a turn to complete a task. I observed and noted which students were answering the musical questions correctly on the first try and which students needed a few tries to answer them correctly. (This will assist me later when I write their progress reports).

Once finished, I placed the students in groups and had them go to the 5 computers in the classroom. My four-measure song was on the screen. Each student was to add dynamics symbols to the bass line, melody, or rhythm square. During the next class, they will listen to their songs again answering the questions of which shapes are the loudest and which shapes are the softest. We will finish by having listened to all songs.

Classroom management suggestion: If your students are not working in groups well yet, and believe me, my students need practice with this, I give them each a marker. When they have a turn, they mark a check on a piece of paper. That way there is a record of all of the students taking turns and who had more or less turns.

This picture is what one of my first grade groups created yesterday during class. You can tell by the shapes that the large ones are forte and the small ones are piano.

As we finish this project next week, I will post their musical dynamic creations on my website on the 1st grade page. I hope that you will visit them and enjoy.