Inductive Learning in the Music Room - Common Core Strategy!

Inductive Learning is one of six essential strategies presented in The Core Six by Silver, Dewing, and Perini.

The basis of the strategy involves students grouping items before the lesson, making predictions based on the groups, and then evaluating their predictions based on the lesson. 

For the music room, I decided to try this with my second grade classes for learning about the instruments of the orchestra. 

To prepare, I made cards with a picture of each instrument and the instrument name. I laminated them and put magnets on the back. (I get business card size adhesive magnets from Staples.) 

As students entered I gave them an instrument. To make the groups, I held up an example card and had them evaluate if their instrument should go with mine. The easiest ones to start with were the brass instruments. These students came up to the board and I asked this group, "Why do these instruments go together." They made some great observations including size, color, shape, valves, and mouthpieces. The group put theirs on the board and I labeled the group with its name.

Once all the groups were on the board I asked the students to think about what they thought the group would sound like. Soft or loud, fast or slow, like a party or like a lullaby. I gave them lots of options and words to use to form guesses. I wrote the guess on the board in black. After someone made a guess I told the class to listen to see if they agreed or disagreed.

With my iPad mirrored to the AppleTV (you could also just plug the iPad into some speakers), I played the instrument families sections on the app Benjamin Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. After each prediction, I played the section, and the students gave evidence that agreed or disagreed. I wrote this on the board in green for agree and red for disagree.

While we were listening I had the students move to the music, one distinct movement for each instrument family. After the agree/disagree discussion was finished I then played the recording of the piece showing the video so the students could see the instruments we just heard being played. While they were listening, they showed me what they heard by moving for that instrument family's movement.

The children came up with some great observations about the instruments before they even heard what they sounded like! predicting what the instrument family groups would sound like was a little hard due to limited language. 

The kids really liked it and it was a fun way to introduce the orchestra!

Using EduCreations as Visual Aid for English Language Learners

My school has a high population of English Language Learners. When I teach songs I make sure that all students know the meaning of the words.

One of the ways I do this is through using the EduCreations app. I search for images from Google Images and save them to the iPad. In the app I select a picture and then type lyrics on top. I move forward one page and repeat the process for the rest of the lyrics. The last step is to go back to the first page, hit the record button, and then I sing the song along with the images.

Watch the video on the educreations website.

During class I mirror my iPad to the AppleTV. I play the video and we sing along. I can pause and we can discuss the picture and the words. I can also point to each word as we sing, like live karaoke! 

I think this process helps all the students learn the words of the song.

How do you use EduCreations?

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!

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!