Parts of a Note Beginning-of-the-Year Bulletin Board

 

For this year's beginning-of-the-year bulletin board, I wanted to label the different parts of notes and eventually came up with the title "Take note: We are all PART of what makes our school community shine!"  It's a little wordy, but I liked that it included both "note" and "part."  You could insert your school name in place of "our school community" too.  This bulletin board can also double as a year-round reference, simply titled "Parts of a Note."  

Parts labeled:

• Note head (the internet is telling me it's really spelled "notehead" but I just can't do it...)
• Stem
• Beam
• Flag
• Dot

I used the pictures of the different rhythms from this blog post and rearranged them for each note part (see links to printouts below).  I did use a black Sharpie to round out a couple places that looked a little cut off.  For the large version, I printed as-is, then cut a half-inch off each side to be able to use an 8 1/2 by 11" background.  For the smaller version, I set the print settings to 2 pages per sheet and then cut each to 3 1/4 by 4 1/2".  The colored background was a half-sheet of paper, 4 1/4 by 5 1/2, with a bigger black background behind that, again cut to make a half-inch border.

For the large pair of eighth notes, I didn't trust my free-hand drawing skills, so I greatly enlarged an image of an outline of eighth notes, printed/cut/traced onto black paper and then cut/attached the pieces.  I used a Cricut for the text (Fontastic Fonts, DJ Smooth) and arrows, but created a Google doc with everything here to print out.

• Text (Google doc)
• Rhythm printouts (Word document)
• Rhythm printouts (PDF)
• Template for large eighth notes (Word document)
• Template for large eighth notes (PDF) 

Feel free to use!

Music for Life Bulletin Board

 

In an effort to help with retention in orchestra between elementary and middle school, I created this "Music for Life" bulletin board.  I was hearing from students saying that they wanted to become engineers or something else that wasn't directly music-related, so they weren't sure there was room for music classes in their middle school schedules.  I want students to be able to visualize themselves as musicians--no matter what they may end up studying in college or choosing as a career--and to understand that music classes are for everyone--not just those who are planning to become professional musicians.  This bulletin board showcases highly accomplished individuals who didn't necessarily go into music as a career but still had musical backgrounds (or sometimes musicians who also studied other disciplines).

The text on the bulletin board says: 

Music for life!  You don’t have to become a professional musician to enjoy playing music—music is part of a well-rounded education and is for everyone!  Music is something you can take with you for the rest of your life :) 

Check out these individuals who are well-known in their own fields and are also musicians—or are famous musicians who studied other disciplines too!

Here are the 15 individuals included (feel free to add your own):

• Neil Armstrong: Astronaut/Pianist, Baritone Horn Player
• Louis Braille: Educator, Inventor of braille/Cellist and Organist
• Charles Dickens: Author/Accordion Player
• Albert Einstein: Physicist/Pianist and Violinist
• Mahatma Gandhi: Lawyer/Concertina Player
• Art Garfunkel: Singer, Poet, and Actor/Studied architecture; degrees in Art History and Mathematics Education
• Sarah Gillis: Astronaut/Violinist
• Donald Glaser: Physicist/Violinist, Violist, and Pianist
• Madeleine L'Engle: Author/Pianist, Choir Director
• Steve Martin: Comedian, Actor, Writer, Producer, Musician/Banjo Player
• Henri Matisse: Artist/Violinist
• Brian May: Musician, Singer, Songwriter, Guitarist of Queen/Doctorate in Physics and Mathematics
• Condoleezza Rice: Political Scientist, Diplomat/Pianist
• Oscar Robertson: Basketball Player/Flutist
• Fred Rogers: Television Host, Author, Producer, Minister/Pianist
• Molly Yeh: Cookbook Author, Blogger/Percussionist

Who else should I add to the list?  One idea for an extension would be to keep in touch with a school's graduating seniors from music classes and showcase their involvement in music and their field of study/career.

Music for Life bulletin board:

• Google doc

You could print these out on white paper, single-sided, as-is, or I put the text about each person by itself at the bottom of the document in case you'd like to cut out the picture and text and paste onto a colored background as I did.

I also added information about and pictures of community bands and orchestras in the area to show what kind of musical opportunities exist for community members.

Enjoy!

Sea Shanty Arrangement

Here is an arrangement of "Drunken Sailor" I wrote for combined first- and second-year orchestra students--renamed "Variations on a Sea Shanty."  The version for beginners is mostly just open D and first finger E (with a few open As and first finger Bs later on), all in unison.  It has a variation with dotted quarter/eighth notes, which I taught more by ear.  The intermediate version for second-year orchestra students is all D and A string notes including high E, so cellos get to do a little shifting.  (Looking back at the bass part now, I might rewrite m. 7, 8 and the first note of m. 9 and similar places down an octave to give basses the option not to shift up to high E).  This second-year intermediate version includes the hooked bowing, a few slurs for violin/viola, and double stops for all instruments but the basses.  The theme is the melody in unison, and then violins/violas and cellos/basses are each featured in two variations.

Students enjoyed this melody and recognizing similarities and differences between each of the variations.  They also learned the lyrics from Bonnie Greene's Blue Book:

What do you do with a bow and fiddle...early in the morning?

Saw, saw away I tell you...early in the morning!

Sheet music (all PDFs):

• Beginning orchestra parts
• Intermediate orchestra parts
• Score (Violin I represents the beginning orchestra parts, Violin II is from the intermediate version)

Audio (WAV files) to preview or for students to play along with to practice:

• Sea Shanty audio files (Google Doc)

Again, I like to use clip art instead of labeling parts "beginning" and "intermediate" or by grade level, so you'll see matching images within the beginning and intermediate parts and on the score.

Enjoy!  I'd love to hear if you end up trying out this arrangement with your students!