Metronome Beginning-of-the-Year Bulletin Board

Happy fall!  For this beginning-of-the-year bulletin board, a huge shout-out goes to my mom for coming up with the rhyme and to my sister for drawing and painting the metronome!   I always like including something educational on bulletin boards, so I posted definitions of the different tempo markings, a brief history of the metronome, and an explanation of metronome markings.

Here is a PDF and Word document of the text boxes and a a Google doc of the rhyme.  Feel free to use!

Ode to Joy Arrangement

Here is a very simple arrangement of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" that I used with my beginning orchestra last year.  Each instrument has a turn playing melody and harmony.  After the short introduction, violas and cellos begin on the melody together, while the violins and basses begin on the harmony together.  The violas even get a solo measure in the introduction and ending!  Every rest in this piece is a bow lift, so it's good practice for getting bows to match direction :)

The beginners were excited to have their first taste of playing a "real" full orchestra piece, where there are actual melody and harmony parts going on at the same time, and they enjoyed playing a piece that they recognized.  I did play along on piano to provide some fuller harmonies but didn't write out a part for myself.  Please let me know if you'd like me to write out a piano part for this! Update--see below for a notated piano part!

We watched parts of this Ode to Joy flash mob on Youtube too.

• Ode to Joy parts
• Ode to Joy parts with Alpha notation
• Score
• Audio files

• Updated Ode to Joy with fewer bow lifts--parts/score/Alpha parts
• Score with piano part
• Piano part (would work with either version)

Enjoy!

Rounds by Ear

 As we near the end of the school year, I like to teach a round by ear to the second-year students.  Then in our final full orchestra rehearsals of the year, after the spring concert is over, we can play a two- or three-part round without the use of sheet music.  The orchestra has been invited to play at the end-of-the-year assembly in recent years, and everyone lined up in the front of the gym and performed one of these rounds first in unison and then in parts.  It was easy setup because I only needed chairs for the cellists--no stands required :)

Each of these are in the key of C Major, as that is the key we're focusing on during this time of the year, but the rounds could easily be transposed to the key of your choice.  Students do get the sheet music eventually, but ideally they don't need it by then; it's just for reference.  The sheet music documents include Alpha note versions at the end.

Music Alone Shall Live

• Word document
• PDF
• Audio files

Oh, How Lovely Is the Evening

• Word document
• PDF
• Audio files

Lachen

• Word document
• PDF
• Audio files

Enjoy!

End-of-Year Photo Gift

Throughout the school year, I take several pictures of students--during the first few weeks of school when the beginners are still plucking, once students have learned to hold their bow, concerts, Solo/Ensemble tours, etc.  I like to display the pictures on the STAR Musician wall (see post here).

On the last day of orchestra, after students have tried out some pieces from their new summer packets, I give students a little photo memento.  I order photos through Walgreens (waiting for a good deal to come up!), cut colorful paper in half, hand-write the following information on the back, and tape the photo to the front with double-sided scrap-booking tape.
 
Name, instrument
School name, grade
School year
Solo/Ensemble piece(s) and ensemble partner(s)
-My name

It's pretty simple, a little time consuming, but a nice memory for students of their year in orchestra.

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

Lines and Spaces for Each Clef

One of the strategies I use to teach the names of the notes on the staff is mnemonic devices (Good Burritos Don't Fall Apart: bass clef line notes, for example).  This comes after students have learned the notes on the D, A, and G strings (just before the C/E string notes) and after students should be aware that the notes of the staff just follow the musical alphabet (ABCDEFGABCDEFG...).  This is just another strategy to help remember the names of the line and space notes on the staff.  Students are encouraged to create their own sentences and add them to the posters, which then get hung on the wall as reference.

TREBLE CLEF
Lines:

• Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge
• Every Good Boy Does Fine
• Empty Garbage Before Dad Flips

Spaces:

• FACE

ALTO CLEF
Lines:

• Find Alto Clef Extra Great

Spaces:

• Good Boys Deserve Fudge
• Good Boys Don't Fight

BASS CLEF
Lines:

• Good Burritos Don't Fall Apart
• Good Boys Do Fine Always

Spaces:

• All Cows Eat Grass
• All Cars Eat Gas

Lines/spaces handout (half-sheet--print double-sided and cut in half)

• Word document
• PDF

Lines/spaces handout (full sheet--I double-side this with Melodies by Ear)

• Word document
• PDF  

Lines/spaces poster

• Word document
• PDF

Feel free to make a copy and edit to add your own mnemonic devices!

String Fest Seating Chart Template

Our annual district-wide String Fest is a big event for us to plan.  One part of the planning process is figuring out where each of the 200+ elementary string players will sit in our giant combined orchestra.  We want kids to share a stand with someone from their school but to sit near kids from other schools.  We place second-year players in the front rows of the orchestra and first-year players in the back few rows.  I'm not quite sure of the magic number of chairs/stands per row regarding space, so some rows end up being a little roomier than others--or we may rearrange a bit once we see everything set up in the field house--but at least we have a pretty close idea of where everyone will end up from the start.

This is pretty much my step-by-step process:

1. Determine number of students per instrument per grade level per school.
2. Draw orchestra seating chart, using dashes for stands (use pencil!).
3. Add dividing lines with colored pencil to show the different instrument sections and grade levels.
4. Number each stand from left to right for each row (violin side to cello side). 
5. Write in school abbreviations for each stand, trying to be equal about school representation in the front row and outside stands (if there is an odd number of students at a school within a section, use a dash to pair up students from two different schools).
6. Include total number of chairs and stands per row at the bottom of the page.
7. Make a copy of the Google doc template, and then update the number of chairs per instrument/section/row in the copied document.
8. Change the font for the seat numbers (1A., 1B., etc.) to correspond with each of the schools.
9. Scan seating chart and share that and the Google doc with all orchestra teachers.
10. Now each teacher can add their students' names to the Google doc.

String Fest seating chart template

I do show students ahead of time where they'll sit and by whom, but then I also make name cards to tape on the music stands.  I use the following Word document with Word's "mail merge" feature (Mailings/Start Mail Merge/Step-by-Step Mail Merge Wizard) to pull student names/instrument/grade level from an Excel sheet of my rosters.  I'll also include an image of the school mascot to help students more quickly spot their own name card.  And then, of course, I do color-code the cards by instrument.  When printing, be sure to choose "2 pages per sheet."  One of these years I will type up the row and seat number in the roster to include with the mail merge, but so far I've just been hand-writing the row and seat number on each card.  I put the name cards in numerical order (by row, then seat number), and then it's quick work to set them on the proper stand and tape them up the day-of.

String Fest name card template (2 names per page to cut apart and tape on stand)

String Fest name card template (1 name per page to fold over stand and view from both directions)

 

Have a Punny New Year! Bulletin Board

Happy New Year!  For this year's January bulletin board, I'm departing from my usual informational sort of theme and trying out the humorous route.  The internet is a wealth of musical puns, and I also included a couple of jokes where you can lift the flap to see the answer.

"Have a punny new year!" heading, images, jokes, and sources

D String Notes Packet--Audio Files

In keeping with my theme of updating supplements to include audio files, here are the audio files for the packet of music that uses notes on the D string.

• Audio files

And here's the link to the original post about this packet of music.