Thankful for Composers Bulletin Board

Right before Thanksgiving, one of my schools has a Thankful for Writing Day.  It used to be Thankful for Books Day, but with this change of focus this year, I wanted to create a connection to music with the hallway bulletin board.  Hence, a bulletin board dedicated to writers of music!

I made two quick posters: "We are thankful for writers of music :)" and "Thank you composers!" and pulled out posters I had already made of manuscripts from different composers (see this earlier blog post).  I added printouts of my students' latest compositions so they would be represented (and thanked) too!  And thanks to our general music teacher for adding compositions that her students had written as well!

Flashcards on Quizlet

After making paper copies of flashcards and seeing so many sheets in orchestra folders still not cut apart (thus, clearly unused), I went the digital route this year.  On Quizlet, you can take existing flashcards and modify them for your purposes.  Since I only have a free account (which means I cannot upload images), I used existing images of notes but organized them by instrument and string to get all the different sets that I wanted.  I was unable to find an existing image for the viola's high E (4 on A) when I was creating these, so that image is missing.  Oh well.

I do like that students do not need to be a member of Quizlet in order to access the content.  There are also several options for studying and learning the material on the website including a timed matching game.

Here is the short explanation I share with students followed by the links to Quizlet (right-click on the link and open in new tab to keep this page open):


These links will take you to Quizlet, which should work on both computers and iPads. I recommend using the "Flashcards" option and the "Matching" game. Some of the other activities/games do not work so well (such as "Gravity") because you have to type up the entire answer formatted exactly as I did, with both the letter name and the fingering. Sticking to the "Flashcards" and "Matching" options will give you plenty of practice identifying the different note names and finger numbers!

Be sure to click on the link for YOUR instrument!

OPEN STRINGS

• Violin
• Viola
• Cello
• Bass

D STRING NOTES

• Violin
• Viola
• Cello
• Bass

A STRING NOTES

• Violin
• Viola
• Cello
• Bass

D and A STRING NOTES

• Violin
• Viola
• Cello
• Bass

G STRING NOTES

• Violin
• Viola
• Cello
• Bass

G, D, and A STRING NOTES

• Violin
• Viola
• Cello
• Bass

E STRING NOTES

• Violin
• Bass

C STRING NOTES

• Viola
• Cello

NOTES ON ALL 4 STRINGS!

• Violin
• Viola
• Cello
• Bass

Hope this will save you some time!  Feel free to make a copy for yourself and modify as you like!

Celebrate Music with these Great Americans! Bulletin Board

With February being Black History Month, I wanted to create a bulletin board highlighting musicians and came up with the title "Celebrate music with these great Americans!"  It was hard to narrow the selection of who to include, so I think I will switch out some names halfway through the month (they won't all fit on my bulletin board at one time...).

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 their name and picture on the front and then their name/nickname, dates, 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):

• Louis Armstrong
• Chuck Berry
• James Brown 
• Regina Carter
• Nat King Cole
• John Coltrane
• Duke Ellington
• Ella Fitzgerald
• Aretha Franklin
• Dizzy Gillespie
• Jimi Hendrix
• Billie Holiday
• Scott Joplin
• B.B. King
• Wynton Marsalis
• Bobby McFerrin
• Jelly Roll Morton
• Thelonious Monk
• Charlie Parker
• Florence Beatrice Price
• Bessie Smith
• William Grant Still 
• Sarah Vaughan
• Fats Waller

Celebrate music with these great Americans--heading

• Google doc

Names, pictures, and trivia (condensed)

• Word document
• PDF

Names, pictures, and trivia (print double sided)

• Word document
• PDF

Enjoy!

String Fest Reflection Letters

Our annual district-wide String Fest field trip and concert is done for another year!  Instead of having students write up a reflection sheet to share their thoughts about their experience, this year elementary orchestra students wrote letters to the middle and high school orchestra students.  They answered essentially the same questions I would have asked them anyway, but this way they were able to communicate with students they performed alongside last week.  We took a large chunk of time during full orchestra to write letters, and I graded them based on how many questions were responded to in the letter.  Next, I sent them to our middle and high school teachers to distribute to their students.  Students really got into this writing assignment because they knew they were writing to real people--some even addressed their letter to an older sibling or neighbor in orchestra :)

Elementary students were super excited when they came to full orchestra a later week and found handwritten letters to each of them on their stands!  The high school orchestra members had taken a letter, written a response, and then stapled the two together so it was easy to return to the correct elementary musician.  The response letters were so positive and encouraging; it was so nice to read through them!  What a great way to make connections between the different grade levels and schools in our orchestra community! 

Update: I've added a second letter template with sentence starters to make it easier for those students who need the support.  I print the letters double-sided, and students can choose which side they write theirs on.  I've also started marking in the top right corner the student's school and grade level because each middle/high school receives letters from two elementary schools.  This way it is easier to sort and send the letters back to the correct elementary school :)

• Letter templates plus directions (Google Doc)

Inspirational Quotes for the New Year Bulletin Board

Happy New Year! For my first bulletin board of 2017, I displayed four inspirational quotes with images of fireworks.  For the two shorter quotes, I used my mom's Cricut to cut out the large letters, and then I just printed out the longer quotes.  A few colorful markers brightened up the fireworks, and then colored borders matched each quote to its author.

Quotes included:

"Whatever you are, be a good one."
—Abraham Lincoln

"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."
—Oscar Wilde

"The expert in anything was once a beginner."

—Helen Hayes

"Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."

—A.A. Milne

• Google doc of quotes and clip art

Happy New Year!

Blue Danube Arrangement

Here's another arrangement I've written for this year's String Fest.  I've included two sections plus a DC al Fine to end up with an ABA form for "Blue Danube Waltz."  The intermediate parts give the melody to violas and cellos in the A section and to violins in the B section, while the basses get a more traditional bass part.  Harmony parts are either "boom" or "chick-chick," intentionally simple so we can spend more time working on the melody parts in small groups.  Violas and cellos have to play C# on the G string, while violins go up to F# on the E string.  All intermediate parts (except basses) include slurs.  I've also written parts for a beginning orchestra.  The A section is a simplified melody with notes on the D and A strings, and the B section is mostly open strings.  While the intermediate arrangement can stand alone, the beginning orchestra arrangement needs the addition of the intermediate arrangement to fill it out (and to provide a melody for the B section).

I introduced this piece to my sixth graders by listening to a recording of this famous Strauss waltz.  Many students had heard it before and were excited to be learning this piece in orchestra.  Students also learned how to dance a waltz--"forward-side-together, back-side-together" starting on left foot for the leader or "back-side-together, forward-side-together" starting on right foot for the follower.  A few kids partnered up and tried the dance together, while everyone else was content to just try the steps themselves.

Sheet music (all PDFs):

• Beginning orchestra score and parts
• Intermediate orchestra score and parts

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

• Beginning arrangement
• Intermediate arrangement

Intermediate melody (first 4 lines only), which I used when introducing the piece:

• PDF sheet music

Again, I like to use clip art instead of labeling parts "beginning" and "intermediate," so you'll see matching images within the beginning and intermediate parts and scores.

Les Toreadors Arrangement

My district has an annual String Fest, where all the orchestra students in the district get together for a day of rehearsing and listening with a big concert that evening in the field house.  Each grade level orchestra is featured for a piece or two, and then everyone plays a combined piece as the grand finale.  This grand finale piece has to be playable for first-year string players but still interesting to high school musicians.  My solution this year has been to arrange sections of "Les Toreadors" from Carmen by Georges Bizet in a multi-level format.  I did transpose it to D Major from its original A Major to make it friendlier for the beginners, and I shortened the movement to a simple ABA form.

Overview of parts:

• The beginning students get a simplified unison version with limited range--mostly D string notes plus a section with  hopping 2nd finger notes (B on the G string and C# on the A string) and open G.  
• The elementary (second-year) parts have the same simplified rhythms but an expanded range--mostly notes from the D Major scale plus the bass part gets some 2nd finger notes and a fun chromatic passage.  I also included "challenge" intermediate parts which include more finger work, more eighth notes, and a slightly wider range to sound more like the original melody.  The "B" section is the same between the regular and challenge parts.  The different voices would be regular parts (vln/vla/cello basically in unison), challenge parts (vln/vla/cello basically in unison), bass part.
• And then the advanced parts come from Bizet's original, just transposed to D Major.

Here are the openings for the different violin parts for comparison...

Beginning orchestra:

 Intermediate orchestra (regular part)

Intermediate orchestra (challenge part)

Advanced orchestra (Violin I)

Advanced orchestra (Violin II)

Sheet music (all PDFs):

• Beginning orchestra score and parts
• Intermediate orchestra score and parts (with challenge parts too)
• Advanced orchestra score and parts

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

• Beginning arrangement
• Intermediate arrangement
• Advanced arrangement

Intermediate melody (first 4 lines only) and challenge part (first 4 lines only), which I used when introducing the piece:

• PDF sheet music

With all the different versions, you can mix and match to differentiate for individual students.  I like to use clip art instead of labeling parts "beginning" and "intermediate" etc., so you'll see matching images within the beginning and intermediate parts and scores.

Feel free to try out with your orchestras!

Transposition

During sixth grade orchestra, students study the keys of D, G, and C Major.  Students play scales, write compositions, and perform pieces in each of those keys throughout the school year.  At the end of the year, we make connections between the three keys by transposing melodies from one key to another.  We talk through a worksheet together (I usually don't take the time to have students write out all the transpositions on the worksheet, though at least they have the sheet if they'd like a reference or to fill it out on their own later), and we use the solfege Velcro scales as a visual to move from one key to another.  The opening to "Frere Jacques" is the melody we work through together.

Next, I bring out the laminated transposition cards.  These are color-coded by clef, which makes for easy sorting.  Each student gets a different card, and they follow the directions, playing the melody as given and then transposing it to the two other keys starting on the given pitch.  Once completed, students can trade their card in for a different one.

There is a bit of range between "easier" and more challenging melodies as well as between very familiar melodies and not-so-familiar ones, so I take that into consideration when I'm passing out the initial transposition cards.

If I were to adjust these transposition cards, I'd write in the starting solfege syllable for clarity.  While the instructions do say which pitch to start on, students don't always realize that a piece doesn't necessarily start on "Do" and try to start a piece that begins on "Mi" on a G in G Major, for example, instead of a B.  Still, most students have success working through these cards either on their own or with my support.

There are options about which octave to start in, and some students make the connection quickly that many of these can be played with the same fingering but up or down a string.  Once they have caught on to that, I'll have students play up or down an octave so that the fingering will have to change (which usually means that the low second finger will be needed).

While we don't spend very much time on this unit, I like how it ties the whole year together and students can see how they can move between keys.  Students enjoy looking through the different cards and choosing their favorite melodies to transpose--and they enjoy the satisfaction of successfully playing their melody in the various keys.

Transposition handout:

• Word document

• PDF 

Transposition cards with melodies and directions:

• Word document

• PDF

Melodies included (in no particular order):

• Mary Had a Little Lamb
• Largo from the New World Symphony
• America (My Country 'Tis of Thee)
• Ode to Joy
• Yankee Doodle
• Long Long Ago
• French Folk Song
• Mattachins (Sword Dance)
• The Alphabet Song
• Yankee Doodle

Others that I have since typed up, but aren't included here are:

• Happy Birthday
• Spring
• Jingle Bells

Enjoy!

Playing Checkups

From time to time, we have checkup days in small groups, where each student plays for me individually and then I can give some one-on-one feedback to each student.  I prefer to emphasize the value of the individualized feedback, talking about what's going well and where there is room for improvement, rather than calling it a playing test and emphasizing the grade part of it.  I do enter grades from these checkups, but I don't think that's as useful to students as the one-on-one mini-lesson part of it.  I try to keep the atmosphere relaxed, low-key, and positive to keep students from feeling too anxious or nervous.

I usually pair checkup days with compositions--I get everyone started on their compositions and then I ask who would like to play first while the others begin work on their compositions.

I've created a generic checkup sheet that can be easily modified.  I like to put the grade level and name of piece on the top.  I also add a 4/3/2/1 for each characteristic listed; it's quick to circle numbers for each bullet point.  I write in the student name and instrument ahead of time, and I have the sheets already in the order I'll be seeing students that day so I don't have to take any time writing names or digging for the right slip.

While students are playing, I will circle numbers, underline phrases, and write specific comments.  Afterwards, we have a quick conference, talking through the comments I wrote and trying out the comments I had.  It really is like a mini-lesson.  I keep the slip long enough to make a copy of everyone's for myself (to record grades into my grade book later), and then I return the originals to students hopefully by the end of the same day so they can be a reference during home practice.

My district uses achievement based grading, so I enter 4s, 3s, 2s, or 1s into whichever categories are being recorded.

Checkup sheet (generic)

• Word document

Feel free to modify and use with your students!