Kindergarten Classes
In September students will sing simple songs to work on the skills of pitch matching and lyric memory. We do singing games and lots of expressive movement. Students will sing songs about the Naughty Kitty Cat and the Five Puppies. We've added expressive movement to Bluebird Bluebird.
First and Second Grade Classes
We will do some singing games as we start the year. In order to get to know each other, we've done a chant with student names and added some motions. We work each lesson on the skill of singing accurately. The singing dance Tideo has been introduced.
Josh's Class
More to come. I've not seen Josh's class for a lesson yet.
Third and Fourth Grade Classes
The Third and Fourth graders will attend an Ann Arbor Symphony Concert on March 15, 2017. We will again take our recorders and play along with the orchestra. The program this year is called "The Orchestra Sings". Like last year, this program is created by Carnegie Hall and it is part of their "Link Up" series of concerts and education materials. Each student will recieve an instruction booklet and our lessons in class will be taken from those materials when we are rehearsing for the concert. Please see the Recorder Information Link at the top of the page for specific information about our recorder study.
Fifth Grade Classes
For our September classes, students will have a vocal music class and rotate with the instrumental classes. In Vocal Music singing skills will be emphasized, but we don't neglect to play the classroom instruments, such as the world drums and mallet instruments. This past week students had a lesson about David Daniels, UM professor and counter tenor. Rote singing skills and creating harmony were studied.
Sixth Grade Classes
For the first quarter of the year, the 6th graders will do classes in music technology, with an emphasis on notation software. The first program is called Noteflight, and there is a link to that page at the top of this page. Students have a unique password to this site that is provided by the school district. Noteflight.com is also a free website for the general public, but our students will use it through AAPS so that their music creations are protected from being shared with the general public. Students can access this software from any computer. It seems to work best on a laptop or desktop rather than a tablet.
Seventh and Eight grade Music Elective
The first quarter music elective is Music Appreciation with an Emphasis on Musical Theater. I've earmarked the evening of Wednesday, Nov. 2 at 7:00 for a performance of the musical play that we will rehearse and produce. The play will be an adapted work by Gretchen, with student input and assistance. This week we read through an adaptation of Wizard of Oz, and we will need to create a new title for this work if we perform it.