Books of Compositions

When my school started a section in the library dedicated to student writing, I made up two binders of student compositions from my first year of teaching up to the present.  Each time students write a new composition, I make sure to print an extra copy to add to the binder.  Now current (and future) orchestra members can check out what current (and past) students have written.

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!

Dr. Seuss Door Decorations

This year my school is doing a whole Dr. Seuss week, complete with door decorations inspired by different Dr. Seuss books.  My book was The Foot Book, and what better way to decorate the door of the band/orchestra room than by adding feet to instruments?  I colored and cut out photocopies of feet from the book and added them to laminated pictures of instruments that I already had from an earlier bulletin board, and voila!  I think I like the feet on the trumpet and bass the best :)

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)

William Tell Overture Arrangement

For this year's district-wide String Fest, I arranged Rossini's "William Tell Overture" for beginning orchestra.  There are two versions for the very beginners--one is a mostly open string harmony part with a few first finger Es and Bs, and the second is more melodic part that sticks mostly to D string notes.  The arrangement for second year players is very balanced--everyone gets the melody at some point!  Instead of writing repeat signs for repeated material, I wrote it out so violins get the melody the first time and violas/cellos/basses get the melody the second time.  This is written in G Major (so some low 2s) with no slurs (but a few tricky double down-bows in the intermediate arrangement that take some practice).

Orchestra members really enjoyed learning a "real" piece that they had heard before and seen YouTube recordings of professional orchestras playing.  While some students were initially put off by its length (two pages instead of one for the intermediate version), they quickly realized there's a lot of repetition and felt a sense of accomplishment as the orchestra learned each section.


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:

• Intermediate arrangement audio file

Intermediate melody (first 8 measures only), which I used when introducing the piece:

• PDF sheet music of melody
• Word document of melody

Selected YouTube links:

• Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra
• Animated graphical score

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 scores.

Beautiful Bow Hold Bulletin Board

I had been wanting to create a bulletin board showcasing the bow holds of famous string players--and of my students--for a couple of years now and I finally made it happen this year.  You'll see some pictures both before and after I added the student pictures.  Students can check out some model bow holds and start to become familiar with the names of a few well known string players as well as feel recognized for their work on their own bow hold!

• Google doc of pictures, captions, and credits
• PDF of pictures, captions, and credits

Musicians included:

VIOLIN

• Regina Carter
• Yehudi Menuhin
• Midori
• Julian Rhee
• Chauntee Ross
• Lindsey Stirling

VIOLA

• Yuri Bashmet

CELLO

• Yo-Yo Ma
• Steven Sharp Nelson
• Monique Ross

BASS

• Edgar Meyer (French bow)
• Esperanza Spalding (German bow)

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!