A Very Special Guest Episode

Nationally-known poet Christine Hume stopped by our 1/2 classrooms this week (full disclosure: she's a parent of one of our first graders, which is how I was lucky enough to get her to come in). She first shared some musical poetry readings done by her and by her college students. The kids were enthralled by the use of electric guitar on one of Christine's poems, and amused by the off-key singing of a college student on "I'm a Nut."

She then invited us to record a poem for One Pause Poetry’s mp3 archive project. The site, to be launched in the next month, will contain a featured audio recording of children and poets reading poetry. A different poem will be featured each day, and all recordings will be forever available in the archive. The website will be at http://www.onepausepoetry.org/. A mockup:

We've read through a few poems in each class. Susan's class voted unanimously for Treehouse by Shel Silverstein and Elaine's class will vote after break. Next up is learning the poem backwards and forwards, then deciding on the characteristics of sound we will use to convey the meaning of the poem, using voices and instruments.

Expressive poetry recitation is not only an important goal in itself, but also improves reading skills and helps children use their voices more effectively in singing. Thanks for this excellent opportunity for an authentic project, Christine!

Body Music!

The 5/6 graders get to start the Human Body theme early, and so have already been learning about all the different types of music that humans can make with our bodies alone. We're so versatile.

Keith Terry heads up the International Body Music Festival, and is a pioneer in performing body music in the US. He gets an amazing variety of sounds from his hands and feet, then combines them with dance and humor. We've begun learning some of his simpler body percussion patterns, which are a great way to combine math and music as well as to continue building rhythmic and ensemble skills.


Keith did an informative segment about body music on PRI's The World:

We've also looked at the African-American art of stepping, and will be looking to Nick Cave's soundsuits and Rahzel's beatboxing as further inspiration to create a performance.

The students were excited to share their budding beatboxing talents, having just learned techniques in Chris' Hip-Hop EB. One student is already able to simultaneously hum a melody and beatbox a rhythm, à la Rahzel. Impressive!

I hope to harness the students' energy and enthusiasm toward creating an effective musical performance...stay tuned!

Author/Illustrator Studies

We're continuing to use books and illustrations to inspire our K-4 music-making. Some highlights:

1/2 classes enjoyed Lizard's Song by George Shannon, both listening to me read and supplying sound effects and singing when necessary (or fun). Elaine recommended the book to me (thanks, Elaine!); it illustrates how satisfying music can be both simple and personal.  Students then composed their own song lyrics based on what was near and dear to them. Subjects ranged from their parents and teachers to video games.

1/2 classes also studied the famous authors "Anonymous" and "Traditional," as collected by Iona Opie and illustrated by Rosemary Wells.
Because of their simple rhythms and interesting subject matter, nursery rhymes make great songs. We used Wee Willie Winkie as an inspiration for movement games and a simple song accompanied by Orff instruments.

Kindergartners have been their own illustrators as we prepare Au Clair de la Lune for their upcoming fête française. Students were especially captivated by Pierrot, the sad clown, and many dictated letters asking him not to be sad so he could tell jokes again. They had some excellent ideas for mood management techniques, as well!

We have been using this and other songs to experience and identify upward and downward pitch movement in music. Students especially loved improvising on the stepped glockenspiel while their classmates followed with movement.

3/4 classes have continued to use their haiku and the song Kagome, Kagome as musical fodder. We experienced a magical musical moment when some students, either by accident or on purpose, began the song a measure after others. Instead of chaos, it sounded gorgeous: the Kagome Canon was born! Students are accompanying themselves on Orff instruments, and learning about ostinati and pentatonic modes in the process.

We also used Opie and Wells' book to aid in learning our next recorder piece, "Cobbler, Cobbler". We will then use this piece as the basis for improvisations in the coming weeks. The kids are super excited about improvising after seeing the Rebirth Brass Band in action at our last field trip.

Why is it dark in the music room?

This week and last, we began our month of Author/Illustrator studies in Music. Our ordinarily light-filled music room was darkened with swaths of fabric hanging in the windows to set the stage for exploring the poems from the book A Pocketful of Stars: Poems about the Night, compiled by Nikki Siegen-Smith and illustrated by Emma Shaw-Smith. Again inspired by lessons designed by Orff educator Brian Crisp, the children first followed a beam of light with their hands and bodies, then later with the sounds of barred Orff instruments in our room. We then read the poem “Night Lights” by Michelle Magorian, and tried to use our conducting and improvisations to illustrate the poem with sound. The students had enormous amounts of fun conducting each other, and discovered characteristics of movement and the different barred instruments as they worked.

The image of a group of children moving as one and slowly stretching toward a beam of light was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in a while. I’m hoping it will be a lasting memory for the children as well as for me.

Our Backyard Wrap-Up

In music classes we've been tying up loose ends in our work exploring the music of our backyard while beginning our month of author/illustrator studies.

Kindergartners finished constructing their instruments and used them to keep the beat to various songs and nursery rhymes we have learned. Instruments ranged from an elaborate "gong" made of sticks and leaves to simply hitting two sticks together (though with great vigor and panache). Many viewed their instrument as a mere prototype of a fabulous instrument constructed in their minds, as they showed when they drew their instruments and instructions in full color. In talking to students about their instruments and drawings, we discovered many interesting observations about the relationship of sounds to vibrations; students talked about "great bangings and shakings" with emphatic interest.

In 1/2 classes, students did an outstanding job collecting a variety of sounds from outdoors, recording them using words and pictures, then deciding in small groups which sounds they wanted to use in a final composition. We discussed as a class how we could use these sounds to make an effective composition by learning about concepts of steady beat, rhythm, melody, and accent. However, we ran into some roadblocks in deciding how to recreate outdoor sounds in the music classroom and realized we needed some additional skill-building in order to create our own rhythm and melody, as students wished to do. So, recordings were postponed while we practice working with rhythms and melodies.

Students in 3/4 music have been exploring connections between nature, instruments, poetry and music. We listened to fragments of NPR's program on connections between music and nature, and have been working on a group project inspired by a lesson by Brian Crisp, an Orff instructor I trained with this summer. Students have been working in groups to create a piece using only their voices, bodies, recorders, and drums to convey nature haiku from: Classic haiku : a master's selection / selected and translated by Yuzuru Miura. We've studied the Japanese children's game song Kagome Kagome as an example of how to compose melodies that sound Japanese. The kids greatly enjoyed the song and have been trying to learn the words in Japanese as well as English translation, at their request. They were thrilled to learn hand drum technique and common patterns. We've also learned valuable lessons on how to work effectively in small groups, and have made great strides in negotiating and cooperation among group members. I have yet to conquer the issue of the enormous amount of noise created by 16 students simultaneously working on recorders, drums, and group negotiations. I'll let you know when I discover the secret (and sell it to music teachers worldwide).