All about my life

In preparation for Multi-Cultural Week at my school, I am teaching Rhythms of One World by Gary Fry to our whole school. I have the background track that will be great to use in the gym for our assembly. It's fun and adding some movement has made it even more fun! Click HERE to check it out on the Alfred website. There is an instrumental break in the middle of the piece and I thought it would be fun for my grade 1 students to create body compositions using text that I made up, but went well with the meaning of the song. We went through each pattern and tried it on different spots on our body.  After modeling and creating one as a class, students created their own compositions using this chart and colouring the body percussion boxes accordingly, lining up their choice up with each beat of the rhythm pattern. The kids really enjoyed doing this! Click HERE for the FREE Smartnotebook file for the composition lesson, and HERE for the student composition worksheet. I am always lookin...

Last month, my student teacher created a bumblebee themed unit that incorporated grade 2 curricular music outcomes. The unit included an Orff orchestration of a bees song as well as a listening activity to Flight of the Bumblebee! Part one (5-10 minutes): For the listening lesson, students each received a piece of water colour paper and a black crayon. They were told to draw the sound of the music thinking about fast/slow, high/low, forte/piano and to think about what kind of movement the music is trying to represent.   After they were finished, we discussed the piece and their drawing. Students figured out that the piece was representing the movement of a bumblebee and we discussed how it moves. Part two (20-30 minutes): This part unfortunately had to happen after my wonderful student teacher Lauren had already finished her time with me. So I continued with the lesson!  Next, we discussed the tempo of the piece and imagined being that bee. What colours would we see? If we wer...

I'm linking up with Sugar and Spice  for Wordless Wednesday!    Manitoba Orff Chapter Children's Day! Our Divisional Orff Day Event! Celebrating Music Monday! Fun Purchase!

Like most of us, I love using picture books in my music classes. I love the book I Ain't Gonna Paint No More by Karen Beaumont. I created a grade 3 composition unit similar to my Pete the Cat unit ,  based on Beaumont's book. As a class, the grade threes took the reoccurring speech pattern and decided on a melody using solfeg.  I created a Smartboard file for us to easily explore different melodies and the class voted on each decision. We talked about contour, whether we wanted the piece to sound minor or major, and discussed composition guidelines in terms of phrase form, steps, skips, where we need to use the home tone, etc. You can download the Ain't Gonna Paint Smartnotebook File HERE  for free! In the story, the child paints different body parts while getting in trouble each time. In groups, my students created soundscapes using non-pitched percussion instruments to represent a certain body part being painted. Once they had something they liked, they needed to notate...

A few weeks ago I attended ENSEMBLE, the 2014 Carl Orff Canada National Conference in Halifax! It was four days jam packed with great sessions, interesting conversations, meeting new people, and reconnecting with fellow teachers. All while doing so in the beautiful city of Halifax! We had Doug Goodkin as our keynote and he had this quote projected. I love it. It was so nice having sessions right beside the ocean! I feel so fortunate to be teaching in Manitoba, and in Canada, where I have mentors such as these! Orff pedagogy continuse to flourish in Manitoba and these wonderful women have played a big part in that!  Carl Orff Canada is celebrating it's 40th anniversary this year and these two spent countless hours creating two resources that present 40 years of COC's history! What conferences do you go to? I would love to hear about them! We are so well supported in my school division. I am interested to hear about professional development support in other areas of the world. Ho...