Advocacy Through Videos! - Using the iMovie App to Promote Music Education

My principal asked if I could make a video to about the music program to show at a meeting. I said sure, thinking it couldn't be too hard. And it wasn't!

iMovie is a FREE and easy to use app. I took some videos of my students and then used the app to put them together. I also took a video of myself introducing the video. I used a combination of pictures and videos. To edit a clip, tap and hold either end to cut off as much as you need. I'm thinking about making a comprehensive tutorial, but that really is basically it. I saved the video to my camera roll and then uploaded it to my district YouTube channel to share.

I thought the video was just to spice up a boring presentation; but the video took off! It was posted in the next day's Enews, our district newsletter that goes to all employees, right at the top! Egads!

I was blown away by the popularity of the video. In talking with a colleague about it, she said, "Something that was a kind of throw away thing for you was something that others were really craving." I guess I really aught to make more then! I'd really like to take one of each grade level, but we'll see!

To maintain privacy, any video that I post to the public I try not to have children's faces in the videos. Here is the video I took for the 3rd grade Learning Center activities of the previous post.



How do you use videos to advocate for your program?

App in Focus: Singing Fingers - See What You Sing!

Singing Fingers is so much fun and makes it easy for kids to assess themselves!

This app opens on a blank page. When you draw on the page with your finger the app records whatever sound is around. The color that is drawn is related to pitch and the size of the line is related to the relative dynamic. 

Today I tried this app with a group of first graders. We're practicing matching pitch and getting into the head voice with some octave low high low oooooo sounds. I sang and drew a line going up and down following the contour. Because I sang an octave, the starting color, high point, and ending color are all the same. The kids echoed my voice and I drew while they sang, again following a contour. They could visually see where they had sung the same pitch as me and where they had a different pitch because the colors were different. 

The first time we tried it they didn't really move pitch much at all. I had them add a low high low hand gesture while they were singing and it got a bit better!

The students were really engaged with this app and I plan on using it in the future!

Did I mention it's FREE?!

App in Focus: Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra

The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra is free application that is a must for any music classroom! It contains an essential introduction to the instruments and players of the orchestra as well as aural quizzes and form games.

At the core of the app is a recording of Benjamin Britten's piece performed by the Royal Northern College of Music Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Sir Mark Elder. The recording can be played with either a scrolling condensed score or with a video of the performers. 

At the left of the score are icons of who is playing which line. Above the score are notes about what is happening and what to listen for. I plan to use this with some guided questions or a graphic organizer for students to follow as they listen and watch. Easily adapted for use across several grade levels.

But the fun doesn't stop there! My next favorite part of this app is the Aural Quiz. It starts out with identifying instruments into their family groups and the difficulty increases as the levels continue. I could see children easily loving this game. With my iPad mirrored to my Apple TV, we could play this game as a class.

There are two games that teach and play with form in the app. Both are very user friendly and make learning about fugue and variation fun. Both also have example recordings with the same kind of extraordinarily helpful explanation text that follows the music as it plays. Children can create their own composition using the variables provided and use musical terminology to explain their choices.

As if that wasn't enough content for a FREE app, there's still more! There are video interviews with the university students who play the music and information about Benjamin Britten's life.

Wonderful app that students and teachers will enjoy! Download it today!

Rap a Tap Tap - Music, Dance and Literacy Lesson Plan

Tap your feet and tip you hat, here comes a lesson for Rap a Tap Tap: Here's Bojangles, Think of That! by Diane Dillon. This lively book tells the story of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, considered by many to be the best tap dancer of all time. 

Integrating books and literature into music lessons increases cross-curricular learning and student engagement. However, being in my first year of teaching, I don't already have a collection of books to use. I am fortunate to work at a school that still has a library and in perusing the shelves I found Rap a Tap Tap.

The book alternates between a line of new text and a repeating phrase, perfect for young music learners. I set the repeating phrase to music, taught the words and rhythm first, and then added the music. While teaching the words we practiced using our different voices, our big bear voice, our little mouse voice, and then we used our singing voice.

We read the book together, all singing the "Rap a tap tap" part together. We talked about dancing, about making sounds with our feet, and how that sound could be music.

I asked the children if they would like to see Mr. Bojangles dance. Of course they said yes!

 For this video I played the introduction and then skipped to the part where Mr. Bojangles dances. I first let the kids just watch the video, and then we all stood up and danced with the video on the second viewing.

This video is very fun as Shirley Temple plays a little girl who doesn't want to go to bed. The children can certainly identify with this!  I also like the video because it shows the children that kids their age can do this type of dancing too.

I did this lesson with kindergarten children, so we just explored moving our legs and arms the way Mr. Bojangles does. They have a blast moving their feet and bodies around to the music. If you have some tap dance background, you could do a similar lesson and teach a few steps with older children.

Enjoy!

1st Grade -Common Instruments- File Folder Game

I have been enjoying creating visuals and games to use in my classroom. Today I present a file folder game for use in 1st grade. The pdf file for this game is free and available from my TpT store.

It includes five common instruments and one uncommon: guitar, piano, trumpet, drum, violin, and recorder. I included recorder because we play it in 3rd grade at my school.

 The file includes:
- Pictures of each instrument
- Pictures of a person playing each instrument
- Written word for each instrument
- Quarter notes to represent syllables

4 games are playable.
1) Match each instrument to the person playing the instrument.
2) Match the written words to the instruments.
3) Categorize each instrument as one, two, or three syllables.
4) Memory game matching each instrument to the person playing the instrument.

All images are copyright under Creative Commons or Free Use.

Happy Teaching!

App in Focus: Educreations

Apps in Focus is a series of blog posts that will focus on iPad applications I'm using right now in the classroom. 

First up is Educreations, an app that turns your iPad into a whiteboard.  I decided to try this one because it is FREE and had good reviews.

What it Does

Turns your iPad into a whiteboard. You can draw on it in different colors just like you can on a classroom whiteboard. However, you can also import pictures from just about anywhere. Tired of drawing staff lines? Just import one and then draw whatever you need to on top! 

The app also allows you to record while you teach. I tried it out, and it is very user friendly. You can record review material and post it online for students. You could also record while you are teaching a class so you could reflect later on how the lesson went. Videos can be saved privately or publicly. 

Using this app with the AppleTV in my classroom allows me to teach the whole class while walking around the room. I can check student work while teaching! It also makes whatever is on my iPad screen enormous. Very helpful for teaching bow hold!

If you don't have an AppleTV you could use this app using a document projector. This would have been wonderful in my previous classroom where I had a document projector but no white board!

What It Doesn't

Allow you to edit a lesson after you have saved it. You also can't edit the timeline of a recording. If you mess up while recording, you have to start over. This app is not for recording long lectures that need to be edited. 

The Lowdown

Free user-friendly application that turns your iPad into recordable whiteboard that can upload pictures from just about anywhere. Try it! 

If you have iPads but no Orff Xylophones... - 2 great apps for the music room

This is my first year teaching, and consequently my first year at my school. I found one lonely soprano xylophone, but nothing else in the way of Orff instruments in the music room. However, my school does have class sets of iPads available to check out from the tech lab. With these two FREE applications, I plan to introduce my students to playing Orff compositions!

First up is MusicSparkles, an instrument sounds app. The FREE version comes with a one octave glockenspiel graphic and four octaves of sound. Above the glock graphic are four buttons which add the additional octaves. That means there are four available instrument sounds in the one image!

There are two mallet graphics that mimic playing with two mallets. It will sound as many bars as you hit, even all eight bars at the same time. Each bar is a different color. They are not labeled with letters and the bars are not removable.

There are a few things I wish I could change about the app. First, every time you tap a note an eighth note graphic floats out. I think this would be distracting for some children. Second, the sounds are a bit synthetic. However, at the price of nothing, I'll take it!

Second is Marimba byBuzlyLabs. With an octave and a fifth from A to E it has superb sound quality. In contrast with MusicSparkles, the bars are all the same color and are labeled with letter names. No mallet graphics and no kid colors. You also cannot play chords, it only plays one bar at a time. With the low A this would be a great one to use for la pentatonic on C.

With these two apps I will have contrasting metal and wood sounds, the option for dynamics with the volume controls, and the ability to create layers of different sounds. I am very excited to hear what it will sound like with 28 iPads playing!