Musical Timeline Wall

My classroom has a music timeline wall with the different musical time periods.  Composers of music that students are studying get added to the appropriate timeline so students have a visual of each composer and his or her place in history.  Each time period has a little collage of the architecture, art, fashion, and music of the time.  Composers studied in 5th grade are on top; 6th grade is on the bottom.  Each time period is color-coded, and each composer poster includes a pictures, dates, country, and title of piece the students are playing.  By the end of the year the cupboards are pretty full!  

I have more wall space at my other school, so here is the PDF of the larger composer posters and a Word document to add your own composers (scroll down to the bottom to see an example of the finished product).  If you're tight on space, here's a much smaller version with just composers from the Orchestra Expressions method book, book one.

Flashcards

As students are introduced to notes on each of their strings, I give them flashcards to cut apart and practice with.  The note on the staff is on one side, and the letter name and fingering is on the back.  Here are pdfs for each instrument--just print double-sided and you're all set!  There are eight notes per page, and I've included the open strings and the first notes typically learned for each string:

Violin

1, high 2, 3, 4/0

Viola

1, high 2, 3, 4/0

Cello

0, 1, 3, 4

Bass

0, 1 and 4 in first position, 1 and 4 in third position

Classroom Rules: I Respect

For my first three years of teaching, these were my classroom rules.

I respect...

• myself
• others
• instruments
• music

I connected each line by stringing ribbon through each hole, linking each word like a ladder.