We are back in the swing of things at Park and starting an awesome school year!
Our kindergarten students are learning all the 'ins and outs' of music class. They're working on finding their seats and lining up (which is a pretty new thing when you've only been to school for 5 days!). They're also learning lots of new songs like "Engine, Engine Number 9" and practicing using their singing voices. We began talking about Music Opposites this week, which will be a central theme of their learning in kindergarten music!
First grade students are reviewing their music opposites and we will be starting some pre-music-reading activities next week. We'll be focusing on long and short sounds as well as high and low sounds. These will evolve throughout the year into the key building blocks of music (melody and rhythm). For now, they are enjoying known songs and games from Kindergarten, as well as adding a couple new tunes to their repertoire.
Second grade and third grade students did some AMAZING sight-singing this week, reading melodies of mystery songs on the board and identifying them as songs they learned last year. Next week, second grade students will take our SLO (Student Learning Objective) Pre-Assessment, which we will compare to the SLO Post-Assessment in the spring. These two assessment tools will show the growth of their musical knowledge and skills throughout second grade!
Third grade students are gearing up to learn a new rhythm, which we will call "Mississippi," for now...(dun, dun, dun!). They are learning new songs and reviewing melodic and rhythmic concepts from last year.
Fourth and fifth grade are reviewing concepts from last year and also beginning work with new rhythms (4th grade with "short-long-short" and 5th grade with "Blueberry"). Both grades used the song "Liza Jane" and a fun hand-clapping game to dive into how their new rhythms sound to sing and feel to play. Fourth grade will be bringing in recorder money ($4, not $3, as it says on the supply list- as we opted for an 'upgraded' recorder this year) beginning Monday 8/29. We will begin playing them in class on Friday 9/2 (which is a Day 1 on our Related Arts rotation).
Sixth graders are reviewing the many rhythmic and melodic concepts in their musical 'bag of tricks' and we will begin synthesizing this knowledge in new ways. We'll also add a couple new rhythms and solfa syllables (do, re, mi, etc.) to their list of known concepts.
During the first week of school, grades 2-6 played a new game called "Jump In, Jump Out," which allowed volunteer soloists to share a fun fact about themselves in a rap style. We had a blast!
Keep checking in on this blog for updates on what's going on in music at Park!
Also, follow Park Shark Music on Twitter: @ParkSharkMusic
