Elementary Music/Music Technology Blog

Since I blogged about Music Express on Monday, I thought that today I would blog about Music K-8. I have held a subscription to Music K-8 for the past 10 years and I wanted to share the 10 things that I like about this periodical:

1. My students love singing the songs!
2. My students love playing the recorder songs!
3. The accompaniment CDs are recorded with a live band or orchestra and the arrangements are excellent.
4. If you are not a fan of accompaniment CDs, the piano accompaniments are just as good.
5. The ideas for concerts, lessons, music classrooms, etc from the editors and music teachers are priceless.
6. There are new songs and some wonderful arrangements of old standards in each edition. Each song comes with a description, history, and how to teach it effectively in the classroom.
7. The music is in an age-appropriate range for young voices.
8. You will receive 6 editions per year. You have the option to order just the magazine, or the magazine and CD, or the magazine, CD, and the students’ lead sheets.
9. The 2-part songs can be performed in unison and sound just good.
10. If you are a 1st year teacher are a teacher close to retirement, there is something for everyone in this magazine.

If you use this magazine in your classroom, I would love to hear from you and to find out what you like about Music K-8.

If you are an elementary general music teacher like myself, then I am sure that you have heard of John Jacobson, an extremely enthusiastic and talented musician, music educator, song writer, choreographer, founder of America Sings! and inspirational speaker. When I attend one of his workshops, I always come out feeling rejuvenated and wanting to be a better teacher.

A few years ago he, along with publisher Hal Leonard, created Music Express, “the magazine designed to help you, the everyday hero, as you share music with young people in your classrooms. It will bring you fresh ideas from some of the best music educators in the country in a format that’s easy to use and fun!”–John Jacobson. It is an excellent periodical that gives you new musical activities to use with your students, five new songs per issue, and a teacher’s edition along with colorful student editions. It is issued 6 times per year and the cost is reasonable if you have an average music budget.

Another feature that they provide are the weekly music tips. Every Monday morning, I will receive a “Music Express Teacher Tip” via email. I find these tips extremely helpful and useful. Many times the tips will give me new ways of presenting a musical concept or provide me with new materials. Today’s tip was extremely helpful because I am sure that at one point or another in our careers as music educators, we have run into the topic of “what type of music and I allowed to present at a concert, especially a holiday concert?” I inserted the tip below because it gives great insight into the concern we come across when planning music for our concerts.

	Although the First Amendment of the United States Constitution ensures the separation of church and state, the use of sacred music by music educators does not violate the law when it passes the three test questions raised by Chief Justice Warren. E. Burger in Lemon vs. Kurtzman (1971), also known as the “Lemon Test.” When selecting music for your choral ensemble, ask the following questions when considering a sacred selection: 1. What is the purpose of the activity? Is the purpose secular in nature, such as studying music of a particular composer’s style or historical period? 2. What is the primary effect of the activity? Is it the celebration of religion? Does the activity either advance or inhibit religion? 3. Does the activity involve an excessive entanglement with the religion or religious groups, or between the schools and the religious organizations?

If you get a chance please check out Music Express. If you already use it, please leave a comment and let me know what you think!

This trimester, my 3rd graders learned about the rainforest in their Science classes. To integrate what they learned in science with music, the students created a song to go with the facts that they learned about the rainforest. The students used Sibelius’s Groovy Jungle to create their music. I divided them into five groups of 3-4 students. They each launched Groovy Jungle from one of the five computers in the music classroom. Together, they decided on and typed in facts about the rainforest. They used melody butterflies, bass line bushes, chord cobwebs, arpeggio flies, rhythm trees, and bonus animals to create wonderful musical works. When they were finished, they presented their works to the rest of the class. They recited their facts and explained why they used the musical elements of melody, rhythm, chords, arpeggios, bass lines, and especially the bonus animals in certain places of the songs. When you view and listen to the pieces, you will see that many of the students coordinated their music with their facts. I hope that you enjoy their wonderful musical creations!

To view and listen to their music, please click here. Please note that the page might take a few minutes to load. In addition, your browser will need to be able to play m4p video files. If it cannot, you can easily download Quicktime for free. The screen videos were recorded with Jing Pro.

Please leave a comment. The students would love to know what you thought of their songs.

Today our school will be celebrating the inaugurations of President-Elect Barack Obama and Vice President-Elect Joseph Biden. Our school will have the students in grades 5-8 watch the inauguration and talk about the events of the day. Students in grades 2-4 will watch is in another room and talk about the events. I will be in the room with the Kindergartners and 1st Graders. We will be singing a patriotic sing-along, eat our box lunches, and watch President Obama and Vice President Biden take their oaths. The school felt that this is a very historical event and that all of the students should be able to view it. I like the fact that they are grouping the students in three separate rooms so that the activities surrounding the inauguration will be age-appropriate.

To prepare for the sing-along, I went through some of my fake books, “Get America Singing…Again!” (published by Hal Leonard), and Get America Singing…Again Volume 2, to choose some age-appropriate patriotic and world songs. I also included our National Anthem, which is a bit difficult for grades K and 1 to sing at this age so I will sing it for them, and I included the words to Hail to the Chief, since they will hear the President’s Own Band perform it as the inauguration.

If you would like to see and download the powerpoint that I made, please click here.

I hope that you will get a chance to watch this historic event today around 11:30 am.

Back on November 19, I wrote a post titled “What are Your Students Performing at the Holiday Concert?” which posted a list of the songs that my students in grades K-3 would perform at the 2008 Holiday Concert.

This post gives you four 30-second excerpts:

1. Angel Band featuring the 3rd graders on recorders
2. A Holiday Hand Jive performed by grades K-3
3. Este es La Navidad performed by grades 2-3
4. Siyahamba performed by grades 1

You can find the excerpts on my podcast site. I hope that you enjoy them, especially if you are thinking about ideas to jot down for your next year’s concert.

If you teach in a school that has a grade that celebrates the 100th day of school, then you know how important the number 100 is. As my school will be approaching the 100th day of school in the next month or so, I have already seen the projects begin. In all of the Primary grades, the students begin each day by placing the number of the day onto the number corner calendar. When the 100th day of school occurs, my 1st graders will make visors with 100 stickers on them and wear them for the entire day. In addition, they all bring in a 100 pieces of snack (i.e. 100 M&Ms, 100 pretzels, 100 pieces of granola, etc) and the teachers mix it in a huge bowl and distribute the trail mix as snack for that day.

In music class, my 1st graders and I make a list of our 100 favorite songs (with the limitations of no “bad” words–you would not believe what some 1st graders listen to because they have older siblings, etc) and I post the list outside my classroom. Then, I see the middle schoolers come by and read the list. They will stop and tell me that they love some of the songs the 1st graders picked and they remembered when they did this in music when they were in first grade. I share their comments with the 1st graders, who beam with pride.

We also learn some vocal and rhythm skills from singing songs from Music K-8 such as “The 100th Day of School” and “One Zero Zero.” We will perform them on a community meeting close to the 100th day of school.

Finally, 100 means a lot to me because I have just reached my 100th post of my blog! Thank you for reading and sending me a comments. It makes my day!

What do you do in music class to celebrate the 100th day of school?

I just checked the Apple website and saw the iLife ‘09 as well as iWork ‘09, were just released. I have not yet made it to the Apple store to check it out, however, here is what I have read so far:

iLife ‘09: From what I have read, I am looking forward to seeing the new feature in GarageBand that lets you learn guitar and piano through interactive lessons. In addition, in a separate purchase, you can learn from  musicians who have made popular guitar riffs and songs famous through videos. My reaction to this is if you have a student who loves guitar hero and would like to learn how to actually play some of the songs, then he/she could go to GarageBand (with a separate purchase for the additional application) and learn the song from the actual musician. In iPhoto, I am looking forward to easily sharing my photos to my facebook page and organizing my pictures by faces and places, as well as events. In iWeb, I look forward to seeing some new widgets and a better drag and drop feature. And in iMovie, I am looking forward to fine-tuning my edits with the Precision Editor. In addition, it has the ability to stabilize your videos even if you recorded it with a shaky hand. Here are some links that will explain the newest features:

1. Apple Website
2. Apple Introduces iLife ‘09
3. GarageBand ‘09: What you need to know
4. iLife ‘09 addes features tweaks and fun

 iWork ‘09: I look forward to seeing Keynote’s integration with the iPod Touch or the iPhone. It will allow you to control your Keynote presentation with your iPod Touch or iPhone. It works through a 99 cent Keynote application. Plus, the iwork.com allows you to share your iWork ’09 documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, no matter if you are a PC or MAC user. Just click the iWork.com button in the toolbar, and your document, spreadsheet, or presentation is uploaded instantly. Mac OS X Mail sends each invited reviewer a unique URL (from apple.com). iWork.com is free for users to sign up and use while in beta, but it will eventually be a fee-based service once it goes 1.0, and looks like it requires a MobileMe (Mac) account. My reaction to this is I would like to see how it differs from Google docs, which has been around for awhile, eay to use, allows you and other users to edit the documents, anyone can use it, and is free. One article reads that you cannot edit docs in iWork.com, which means it cannot come close to Google docs, but I will have to look more closely at it.

1. Apple Website 
2. HandsOn: Apple iWork ‘09
3. Apple releases iWork ‘09
4. Is iWork ‘09 an Office Competitor?

If you have tried either of these products, I would love to hear from you and find out what you think of their new features.

I always enjoy reading various music boards for numerous reasons:

1. To learn new ideas on how to teach a musical concept.
2. When I’ve had a bad day, I like to read the boards because after reading a few posts, you realize that you are not the only music teacher who has bad days occasionally.
3. To ask questions. You will receive a lot of responses that will ultimately assist your needs. Important note: Some of these boards require you to be a member of the organization in order to post a question, however, most boards allow you to read the posts regardless if you are a member or not.
4. To assist other music teachers.

This week on the National Association for Music Education boards (MENC boards), I came across some ideas on how music teachers could incorporate Wii music.

Wii Music idea for introducing famous musicians to students - This post has a teacher stating how he/she will use the the Wii music to resemble famous musicians such as Yo Yo Ma and Elle Fitzgerald in his/her general music classes.

Wii Music - This post found on the MENC band board, shows a variety of different opinions and ideas on Wii music in the classroom. This post is useful because it shows teachers who support the idea of Wii music in the classroom and those who do not.

This is just a sample of how to utilize these music boards. These boards are extremely useful for any teacher from a novice teacher who is just starting out to an experienced teacher.

Click to hear the song: jam-the-fore.mid

Today, I integrated what the 3rd graders were studying in science class into our music class. For the past month, the students have been learning about the Rainforest. Today, I divided the students into 5 groups. Each group launched Sibelius’s Groovy Jungle, used the text tool to type three facts about the Rainforest into the create mode, and created a song that emphasized their facts. The students used musical elements such as melody butterflies, rhythm trees, chord webs, arpeggio flies, bass line bushes, and bonus animals. At the end of the project, they titled their Rainforest and presented their song to the class. They described why they used melodies in some measures, why they chose certain bonus animals to emphasize words, and why they chose the musical elements that they did. Afterward, I saved the Groovy file as a MIDI file. If need be, I could convert the MIDI file to an mp3 using iTunes.

The students loved this project. Once all of the 3rd graders are finished, I will post them on my website: http://www.amymburns.com.

For now, please enjoy this example from a group of three third graders, who titled their song/Rainforest “Jam the Fore.” If it is difficult to see the pictures, then click on the picture and a bigger version of the picture will appear. I hope that you enjoy it!

Recently, my divisional director sent me a unique article about the chorus director of Staten Island’s P.S.22, Gregg Breinberg, and the rising fame of his chorus. It is an inspiring article tracing Breinberg’s journey from being a music teacher whose job was cut, taking a job as a classroom teacher, and then beginning a music program at that same school against many odds. He wanted to make a musical difference in his students’ lives and began teaching them more contemporary choral music. He also began posting his rehearsals on YouTube. The rehearsal of his students singing a variety of Tori Amos’s tunes received so many hits on YouTube, that Tori Amos heard about it and eventually visited the school and attended a rehearsal.

It is an excellent article written by Azadeh Ensha and it appeared this past week in the New York Times Education Section. To read the article, click here.

My initial reaction to this article is that I commend the teacher for posting his rehearsals on YouTube. The rehearsals are not perfect, but realistic. Teachers can watch them to see how other rehearsals are run. Parents can view the rehearsals to see the choral curriculum in action. Most importantly, Breinberg is getting his choral class out of the “traditional classroom” and into the eyes and hands of others such as parents, administrators, the community, and so on. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, we are in the times when the music programs need to be validated. With the economy in a slump and more states cutting funding from education, music teachers are now looking over their shoulders more than ever. When we can bring our music to the community, to the public, to the parents, and to the administrators so that they can see the value of music education and the positive effect that music plays in the roles of our students, then we are staying true to our profession as music educators. Lastly, if you have the permission to post your rehearsals, your students’ works, etc., and you had the capability to post them, then why wouldn’t you promote your students’ works?

Again, just my 2 cents on a very huge topic. I would love to hear your thoughts.

What do you think about posting your rehearsals on YouTube? What are your reactions to the New York Times article and the YouTube videos?