At this time of the year, I feel so very grateful that I get to spend my days making music with kids. With the many difficult situations going on in our world, I’ve been working to reconnect with what it was that made me love music in the first place. Music was always the place in school where I fit in. Particularly in seventh grade, when I got my first pair of 1987 giant plastic framed glasses, and had to wear a headgear to school, choir was the place that I could shine, and make up for my otherwise awkward being. In choir, the headgear came off, and people heard my voice, rather than seeing what made me different. Music gives us connection in so many ways. We connect to ourselves and our emotions. We connect to other cultures. We connect with our peers in ways we may not elsewhere. With music, we are able to speak a common language. I hope, in the music room here at Daniel Bagley, we are giving students ways to connect, places to shine, and a place to call home.

Here’s what we’ve been up to:

Kindergarten and First Grade: Our youngest students have been working with the concept of high sounds and low sounds. We read a book called “Leaf Man” by Lois Ehlert, which has a repeated line:

“A leaf man’s got to go where the wind blows.”

We learned that a repeated line in a song is called a refrain. We put the refrain on cards on the board, and students got to take turns  moving one or two words higher than the others. Then we sang our refrain, moving our voices to a higher pitch for those words that were higher on the board. We also discussed how leaves fall to the ground, imitated these movements with our bodies, and followed the sounds of a xylophone as they spun down, till our leaves (bodies) landed on the floor.

First, Second, and Third Grade Classes: All classes containing second graders have been working on a composition project that is tied to our district common music assessments that assess both music, and 21st Century skills. While some first and third graders also worked on this project at their own level, second graders are the students completing the entirety of the project. Second graders have worked to complete the baseline assessment which involved writing a line of words, setting them to rhythms we have already learned, and performing their composition for me. To prepare for this, we reviewed rhythms we had previously learned, practiced reading them in several different ways, and practice matching syllables to rhythms in a class composition. The 21st Century skill we are emphasizing with this group is Creative Thinking.

3-4 and 4-5 classes: These classes got to work in drum circles. We spent time learning the system and expectations involved in a large drum circle. Then we learned to play in an ensemble involving tubano drums, shaker eggs, and rhythm sticks. We learned a pattern, and learned to sing a song from Ghana called, “Sansa Kroma”. We also learned to play a rock passing game with this song (many younger classes also did parts of this). By the end of the week, we were able to have some students play instruments while others played the game on the floor and sang. As these classes focus on the 21st Century Skill of Communication, we discussed how people in all cultures use music to communicate with one another, and have begun discussing musical tools we have to help us communicate (rhythm, tempo, meter, instrumentation).

Conversation Starters:

Kindergarten and First grade

• Can you make your voice go up and down?
• What is your favorite part of brain dance?
• Can you show me with your body how a leaf falls from a tree?

First, Second, and Third grade

• What rhythm has one sound on a beat? (Ta or quarter note) Two sounds? (Ta-di or 2 eighth notes) No sounds? (Rest or quarter rest)
• Second and third graders (and some firsts) should be able to write 4 beats of these rhythms in stick notation. Ask them to write you some rhythm.
• Can you sing “Sansa Kroma”?

3-4 and 4-5 Classes

• Tell me how drums circles work in music class.
• What is your favorite part to play in a drum circle?
• Can you sing “Sansa Kroma”?
• Can you teach me the rock passing game that goes with “Sansa Kroma”?

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!