Kindergarten has been working with leaves as a precursor to reading notation: one large maple leaf is "leaf" and two smaller ones are "crunchy." This will translate to "ta" and "titi" and then "quarter note" and "eighth notes" down the road, but we're not there yet! This week, we practiced moving our voices like leaves in the wind, and then colored our own "leaf" and "crunchy" leaves, which were then cut out and glued into our own crunchy leaf patterns. We'll use these next week, too! Our First Graders are continuing work on steady beat. This week we used our steady beat swords while listening to John Phillip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever" as played by the U.S. Marine Band. This was a great opportunity for us to also talk about the parts of an orchestra, and to practice conducting! Second Grade started our year-long learning about the instruments of the orchestra. We met a friend named George from Australia (and did some geography learning) who told us about the instruments of the orchestra. Then we learned our Instruments Song: The instruments, the instruments, tell me what you know about the instruments! The instruments, the instruments, tell me what you know about the instruments! Brass, and strings, woodwinds, and percussion. Brass, and strings, woodwinds, and percussion. The instruments, the instruments, tell me what you know about the instruments! Then we started learning about the first and largest orchestral family: the percussion family. All of our second graders loved this video, pictured in action below: This week, our Third Graders continued their work on our book/song project. We divvied up the reading parts and started practicing and recording...stay tuned for our final product! Fourth Grade had the surprise of their lives when they came to class and learned that they were starting to play the ukulele! And finally, in preparation for camp this week, our Fifth Graders sat around our virtual campfire to sing some campfire songs. We hope they have had a wonderful time at camp! If you'd like to listen, here are two of their favorites from class:
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I'm not usually one to brag, but something happened this week that I would like to share with our school community: I was highlighted as an "Exceptional Teacher" by AAPS! It is such an honor to be seen as someone who is making a difference in the lives of our students. I am so grateful to be here! You can read the entire article here: https://news.a2schools.org/kristin-berger-king-elementary-music-teacher/ This video is a snippet of some of our All Are Welcome lesson from the first weeks of school: This week, all of our classes used movement in some way. We have a really great movement word wall (see our "Classroom Tour" page and look for the big red bulletin board) with all kinds of ways to move our bodies. Each class started off by identifying a few and traveling around the room. Some examples: tip-toe, zigzag, self-space, slither, squat, and swim. Our Y5, Kindergarten, and First Graders read a book by Eric Litwin titled Pete the Cat: Rockin' In My School Shoes. We sang a version of the book that was different than Mr. Litwin has published, and it was a lot of fun to see the kids singing the new song. Then, some of our classes were able to add instruments to our song: egg shakers! This was the perfect time to introduce rest position and what instruments and bodies look like during rest position. It can be so challenging to sit in rest position when there is an exciting instrument in our hands! Our Second and Third Graders continued working with the book All Are Welcome Here by Alexandra Penfold and illustrated by Suzanne Kaufman. We took last week's musical thoughts (what do we like about King? What are we excited about during the first weeks of school?) and turned them into musical sentences, and then added instruments! This group below performed theirs with claps and their voices: These second graders performed their musical sentence with instruments and in a group: This week, our Fourth Graders learned a song called "Sally Go 'Round the Sun." Apparently we are learning a lot of Sally songs this year! Here are the lyrics: Sally go 'round the sun, Sally go 'round the moon, Sally go 'round the sunshine, Every afternoon. We added jumps and started to prepare to add the dance. More on that next week! We also tried to take advantage of the amazing summer weather and played musical Twister outside - students could not name the colors but had to use the musical notation on the board instead. Hilarity ensued when students would get all tangled! Our Fifth Graders only had music class on Wednesday, due to Labor Day, but there was no shortage of music happening in our class. We took "Believer" by Imagine Dragons one step further than the drums, boomwhackers, snaps, and claps from last week...and added xylophones. Plus! We played around with the YouTube feature that speeds up videos and decided that while it is not quite playable or singable, the 2x speed of "Believer" is definitely the best speed.
One of my favorite books in the whole wide world is this one: All Are Welcome Here by Alexandria Penfold, and illustrated by Suzanne Kaufman. Beautifully written and illustrated with wonderfully bright colors, this book uses short stanzas and a repeated line to guide the reader through a school's first day. There are so many aspects of this book that remind me of King Elementary! Can you spot the flags in the cafeteria, like ours? We also have a rich and diverse student body, just like in the book! The first week of school, I like to use this book as a springboard for most of the grade levels' first lesson. We sing the book, we point out similarities to King, we identify things we are excited about coming back to school for...so many places we can take this conversation! Because it is the first week of school and I wanted to focus on getting to know the kids, I did not video our students in action. However, I will share below a video I made of the song I wrote for this book. Please feel welcome to share it with your students and sing it at home! |
Mrs. BergerTeacher, parent, dog mom, traveler Archives
March 2024
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