Tag: music

person playing string instruments
Creative Thinking, Music

Teach Rock for National Poetry Month

Terri Eichholz

April is National Poetry Month in the United States, and what better way is there to teach poetry than with music that was inspired by it? Teach Rock has just the lesson for you, with tons of media to accompany it.

What is Teach Rock?

Teach Rock is a website that has standards-aligned, arts-integrated lessons for students of all levels. These are all free to access, but you will need to register for free. To get an idea of the quality of this site, take a look at the Founding Board of Directors:

You can visit the Lesson Plan Collections page if you want to filter by grade level, subject, genre, activities, or topics. Since you are registered, you can “favorite” any that appeal to you and they will be saved to a Favorites page. The same can be done with Unit Plans, or the Student Edition Slide Decks.

Trace it Back

Trace it Back is a bit different than the other activities. On this page, students are encouraged to learn about what may have influenced one of their favorite musical artists. The page contains links to contemporary artists like Chance the Rapper and more classic ones like Nina Simone. Many of these are directed toward middle and high school age students, but there are a couple that could be used with elementary such as this one on the Beatles.

Where’s the Poetry?

As I mentioned at the top music is, of course, poetic. But if you want to examine some literal poems and relate them to music and history at the same time, the lesson on “Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers’ Movement.” Designed as a civics lesson for elementary students, this plan begins by showing students different photographs and a clip from a PBS where they learn about Huerta and the UFW. Then they hear a few songs related to the movement, including one performed by Alice Bag, “A Street Called Dolores Huerta,” which was based on a poem by Nikki Darling. Students are then given a handout to read that contains the poem, “Huelga” by Diana Garcia and asked to compare the message in the poem to that of Darling’s and Bag’s. They can then write their own haikus about Huerta. (Huerta, by the way, is 93 years old at the time of this writing.)

Montclair Film, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What Else Can I Do with Teach Rock?

You can find lessons for every subject, including physical education, math, and SEL on this site. And the range of activities is anywhere from stations to performances and solving equations. We all know the significant part that music plays in the lives of our students, so Teach Rock is a wonderful resource to help you leverage that for learning.

Creative Thinking, K-12, Motivation, Music, Videos

Working Together While We’re Apart

Terri Eichholz

I have been uplifted by the many videos that have been shared on social media lately showing how people are making their own joy with others despite our physical distances.  I wanted to share a few today.

This first one was brought to my attention in a blog post by @LarryFerlazzo:

Here are two young people who chose to give their elderly neighbor a concert:

The Rotterdam Philharmonic did this gorgeous recording, “From Us, For You” of “Ode to Joy.”

This particular video from the Roedean School in South Africa is beautiful to watch and hear.

I keep watching this one over and over again because I adore the pure joy in these boys as they play Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida.”

Here is an amazing mariachi concert by students on Twitter:

For a dose of absolutely adorable cuteness, you should listen to “Virus in a Tree.”

And finally, for those of us looking for some humor, watch this clever and talented family perform the pandemic version of “One Day More” from Les Miserables. (Thanks to @jtrayers for sharing this on FB.)

If you are looking for other videos to make your heart sing, I have two Pinterest Boards that may help you: Inspirational Videos for Students and Inspirational Videos for Teachers.

Computer Science, Creative Thinking, Education, Fun Friday, Music

A.I. Duet

Terri Eichholz

Today’s Frivolous Friday post is in honor of my colleague, Angela Leonhardt, who is a music educator extraordinaire.  She just made it to the finals for our district’s Teacher of the Year.  That honor and many more are well-deserved by this wonderful teacher, who enriches our community with her dedication.  If I had any music composition skills, I would play her a magnificent fanfare with this A.I. Duet experiment from Google.  Unfortunately, even A.I. can’t mask my ineptitude, but I’m sure that someone with Angela’s talent can find a way to make beautiful music with this fun tool.

H/T to Mental Floss for sharing A.I. Duet with its readers.

withoutmusic
image from Raphael Love on Flickr

 

Education, Music, Research, Websites

Musicmap

Terri Eichholz

Musicmap is an incredible interactive website project by Kwinten Crauwels, which endeavors to offer an  encyclopedic collection of music genres and their histories.  When you first visit the site, you will probably be familiar with most of the titles on the home page.  Click on any type of music, however, and you will be able to access many genres that, if they ever crossed the thresh-hold of your eardrums, you would be hard-pressed to identify their names.

Pop music, for example, offered up “Brill Building” and “Shoegaze,” two genres that sound more like commercials for men’s products to me than musical categories.  In case I had any doubt these existed, though, all I had to do was click on either one to get a definition, time context, and a suggested playlist of examples.

I can’t attest to the accuracy or reliability of Musicmap, but I certainly can recommend it to anyone with an interest in the history of music and in learning more about its extensive diversity.

Pop Genres, according to Musicmap
Pop Genres, according to Musicmap

 

 

3-12, Apps, Education, Fun Friday, Games

Piano Tiles

Terri Eichholz

Piano Tiles (Don’t Tap the White Tile) is a free app, available on iTunes and Google Play.  The name of the game is pretty self-explanatory.  As black and white tiles fall down the screen, your job is to tap the black tiles only.  The black tiles will make the sounds of music notes as you tap them.  The faster you can play without hitting a white tile, the better.  I’d never heard of the game until I saw this article in one of my Flipboard magazines, featuring a pretty amazing setup invented to “beat” the game like no human would ever be able to do.  To be perfectly honest, the video pretty much discouraged me from ever even trying to play the game – at least not until I get some bionic eyes and fingers.

screen shot from Piano Tiles app
screen shot from Piano Tiles app

Creative Thinking, Games, K-5, Music, Parenting, Teaching Tools, Websites

Gifts for the Gifted – Compose Yourself

Terri Eichholz

Thinkfun periodically sends products to me for review. When Compose Yourself arrived on my doorstep, I knew that I should find someone with a musical background to give it a test drive.  Our school music teacher, who is also the President-Elect for the Texas Music Educator’s conference, volunteered to try out the game with her class.  Here is Angela Leonhardt’s review.

image from Thinkfun
image from Thinkfun

“I was recently asked by our GT teacher to test out this music-based game from Thinkfun.  What fun my students and I had being the testers!  Although we were using this in our music classroom, anyone who loves music would enjoy this activity.  With 60 different music cards the possibilities for musical enjoyment are almost endless.

How it works:  Once you have signed into the Thinkfun Compose Yourself website and entered the “make music” code provided with the cards you are set to start composing your own music. Each card has a 4 digit number code that you enter.  You can enter up-to 16 cards in your composition. Once you are done you can hear your composition played by a professional marimba player, orchestra or both. 

Here are some highlights from Compose Yourself we found:

  • Very easy to use.  Students in 1st – 5th grade easily used the website and cards with minimal instruction from me.
  • All of the students enjoyed the music making experience and were disappointed when our time was done. A good sign in my book.
  • The students were very excited to hear their finished products.  One group of students wanted to continue the experiment and see what it would sound like if they all played at the same time.  

Compose Yourself 5th Graders
5th Graders using Compose Yourself

  • Price: Reasonable for both teachers and families.
  • We loved the ‘Clear Composition’ feature at the bottom of the screen to quickly set up a new composition.
  • Of course the Free Set-Up of your account is also a big plus. I set up one teacher account for all of my students to use.
  • Bonus:  You can download the mp3 of your composition and the printed melody line.

For those music educators out there who are wondering how this relates to your classroom instruction and standards, never fear.  My initial purpose was to have students ‘play’ with the ideas.  As an Orff Schulwerk teacher the act of play is where the learning begins for me.  I gave my students a quick overview of how to enter the card codes and told them to play, see what happens. What happens if you flip a card or move it to a different place in the score?  They LOVED hearing their compositions in an orchestral setting.  It was very satisfying to them.  With our second experience I provided more structure to their play by turning this into a lesson on musical form and elemental structures. What started as play turned into learning through play. I can also see future lessons on melodic contour using Compose Yourself.  I don’t see my class using this as a ‘notation reading’ lesson at this point.  I could separate out the cards within their reading ability but I think there are other ways to practice this skill.  I’m not a fan of the ‘lollipop’ notes as we call them in my classroom but I’m sure there was a technical reason why the programmers printed the notation this way.  This is a small minus for an overall great program and experience for my students.

My students have been satisfied with the instrument choices because they’ve never heard their ideas in a full orchestral setting.  The website talks about adding more instrumental choices in the future, which would be a bonus but not necessarily an essential in my book.”

 

1st Grader using Compose Yourself
1st Grader using Compose Yourself

For more recommendation in the Gifts for the Gifted series from this year and past years, check out this page.

gifts