Conducting Beginning-of-the-Year Bulletin Board

 

For this year's beginning-of-the-year bulletin board, I wanted to do something with conducting patterns.  I came up with the title "Lead The Way to a Year of Learning!"  I also thought about doing "Lead the Way to a ____ Year" with lots of different adjectives in different fonts and colors, but then I thought that would look too busy.  In addition to the conducting patterns and time signatures, I included pictures of a diverse set of composers.

I went over the time signatures and conducting patterns with a permanent marker to make them less pixel-y. 

Featured conductors include:

• Leonard Bernstein
• Gustavo Dudamel
• JoAnn Falletta
• William Grant Still
• Eun Sun Kim
• Zubin Mehta
• Matthew Smith (read more about his story here)

• Google Doc of conducting patterns, time signatures, conducting pictures, and labels

2020 Mask Bulletin Board

 

My district is planning an in-person return in September.  I'm nervous about this decision, but one small thing I knew I had in my control was the message in my back-to-school bulletin board.  Here's hoping this is the only year I'll have to use this one!

I found a website that lets you resize a picture of a mask to a photo that you upload, so I tried to add a variety of string players and composers. 

• Photos and text (Word doc)
• Photos and text (PDF)

Beginning-of-the-Year Bulletin Boards

As I'm entering my ninth [edit: 14th!] year of teaching elementary orchestra, I'm starting to get a collection of beginning-of-the-year bulletin board ideas, so here they are all in one place (with links to each post below the picture):

Parts of a Note Bulletin Board

Conducting Bulletin Board

2020 Mask bulletin board

"Welcome" Bulletin Board

"Changes" Bulletin Board 

What Will YOU Create This Year? Bulletin Board

Take Part In A Musical Year! Bulletin Board

Together We Will SCALE New Heights! Bulletin Board 

Metronome Bulletin Board

Springtime Music Bulletin Board

Happy spring!

A simple Google search for "spring music" brings up several titles, artists, and composers.  I selected a few and added images of composers and scores (from imslp.org) along with some quick springtime clip art to create this springtime bulletin board.

Pieces/composers included (in no particular order): 

• "Spring" from The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi (1717)
• Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland (1944)
• "Spring is Here" by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart (1938), sung by Ella Fitzgerald
• Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky (1913)
• On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring by Frederick Delius (1912)
• "April Come She Will" by Simon & Garfunkel (1964)

• Springtime bulletin board pieces/composers/years

Updated C Major Packet

I have updated several of my handouts of supplemental repertoire for second-year students over the summer in preparation for a few students who will be taking this class for the second (or third) time.  I wanted to give them some new pieces to learn, and I'm about ready to change things up a bit too (I did keep a few favorites like "Theme from Surprise Symphony" and "Sailor's Hornpipe").

Here's the post about the original C Major Packet.

And here are the contents of the new packet:

• Row, Row, Row your Boat
• Theme from Surprise Symphony
• Zum Gali Gali
• Sailor's Hornpipe
• Yankee Doodle
• Pomp and Circumstance
• La Cucaracha
• Blue Bells of Scotland
• Minuet in C

I was excited to find that "Blue Bells of Scotland" was written by a woman, Dorothea Jordan--she'll be a welcome addition to our wall of composers!

Enjoy!

• New C Major repertoire packet (Word document)
• New C Major repertoire packet (PDF)
• New Scavenger hunt (Word document)
• New Scavenger hunt (PDF)
• New Answer key (PDF)

Tenor clef version of New C Major repertoire packet:

• Word document
• PDF

Women Wow the Music World! Bulletin Board

March is Women's History Month, and this year I wanted to create a bulletin board highlighting female musicians throughout history.  Thanks to my mom for coming up with the title: "Women Wow the Music World!"(and for cutting out and mailing me the letters)!

As with some previous bulletin boards (see the post "Celebrate Music with these Great Americans!" for Black History Month), I printed out the "condensed" file, trimmed and laminated each half sheet, and then attached them to a folded piece of colored paper.  If you'd rather save some steps, just print out the "double sided" file, fold each page in half, and you're ready to staple them to the bulletin board!

For each musician, I included her name and picture on the front and then her name, dates, country, instrument, profession, genre, and one famous title when you lift up the flap.

Here are the 24 musicians included (feel free to add your own):

• Martha Argerich
• Amy Beach
• Hildegard von Bingen
• Nadia Boulanger
• Regina Carter
• Cécile Chaminade
• Sarah Chang
• Sandra Dackow
• Jacqueline du Pre
• Ella Fitzgerald
• Aretha Franklin
• Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel
• Jennifer Higdon
• Billie Holiday
• Alma Schindler Mahler
• Midori
• Soon Hee Newbold
• Florence Beatrice Price
• Clara Schumann
• Ruth Crawford Seeger
• Anoushka Shankar
• Bessie Smith
• Esperanza Spalding
• Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

Women Wow the Music World!--heading

• Google doc

Names, pictures, and trivia (condensed)

• Word document
• PDF

Names, pictures, and trivia (print double sided)

• Word document
• PDF

Enjoy!

Composer Trivia Bulletin Board

One thing that I like about our method book, "Orchestra Expressions," Book 1, is that it highlights several composers including Bach, Beethoven, Bizet, Copland, Strauss, Jr. and more.  The featured composers each have a portion of a page with their portrait, a short bio, a listening map for a specific composition, and a timeline.  The CD that comes with the book also has a recording of that specific composition for each composer; students are encouraged to listen to that CD track while doing various warmups.

Anyway, I took five of the composers and came up with a bit of trivia for each.  I put the fun fact on the front of a folded sheet of paper and the corresponding composer's name on the inside.  This way, it's an interactive bulletin board--students can flip up the flap to see if they guessed the correct composer!

Here are the pdfs of the text and pictures.  I laminated each bit before taping it onto the colored paper so they would last longer.  I've also included some pdfs of the same trivia written as a word balloon coming out of the mouth of each composer. Enjoy!

• Composer portraits (pdf)
• Composer trivia (pdf) 
• Trivia with word balloons (pdf)
• Great job! plus trivia word balloons (pdf)