Concerts... because it was fun

Hi all! Happy almost Halloween!  I *am* planning on doing on better on blogging, it's just been an INSANE fall.  See, in addition to the every day teaching, taking on a student teacher, having a fundraiser going on, three extra curricular music groups, we also moved our concerts to the high school this year.  So, I thought today I would share with you about one of those, and how it went.

The first thing I do when planning a concert is look at the specific class of students I have and what their particular interests are and what would be fun and different to try with them.

Last Tuesday we had TWO concerts, the 4th grade concert (at 6:00 pm) and the 5th grade concert (at 7:00 pm).  For the purpose of this blog I'm going to focus on my 5th graders.

Can I just say that my 5th graders, ever since they were kinders have been blissful.  I have never had a group of students that are so incredibly kind to each other, that you can joke around with and then they get back to business and who are so excited to be with you.  They were our first kinder class when we opened the school and they have grown into 146 amazing 5th graders.

Last spring my technology teacher came to me with the idea to collaborating together on the 5th grade. So... knowing we were moving the concerts to the high school we decided to go for it. Ya know, cause crazy is how we roll!  There are some things that I would do differently but overall it went so well.

We started the concert with Firework (not a favorite of mine because the range is hard and for this particular group they struggle getting up to those high notes.) You can give it a listen:

So for this song they used finger flashlights. (I also have to mention that the man that was suppose to record our concert had an emergency heart surgery so I was able to get videos of  5 of the 10 songs).  I had two student leaders helping me because this group is so large and our goal with this song was to work on expanding our vocal range.

Whenever possible I do like to incorporate art music or a listening/movement activity in the concert.  For this concert we use The Aquarium from "Carnival of the Animals," with most of the movements from John Feierabend's Move It DVD.  They used white gloves and black lights:

We also sang "Catch a Falling Star" and "Epo i Tai Tai" (for Epo i Tai Tai we used PVC pipes with glow in the dark tape and glow sticks to do a stick pattern. One of the 5th graders played Epo i Tai Tai on violin with our tech teacher playing cello as an introduction.  (Note, they also added glow sticks to their bows and instruments... I wish I had a video!!!)  And then we went into Counting Stars:

Another song we did that was really sweet was "Pure Imagination" from Willy Wonka.  One of our grandmothers played piano for us and it was so sweet to see her perform for the first time with her granddaughter.  The tech teacher also had the students program the Spheros so that they could toss them to the macro beat of the song and they would change colors. It was a pretty cool effect, despite them dropping the Sphero a could times (Yikes, those things are loud!  And of course it was the ONLY time they dropped them.)

Then Tracy King blogged about this song, Fireflies. Knowing we were doing a "Glow Show" I knew we just had to do it too.  The kids LOVED it and the parents were just in awe!

Then they went into Ghostbusters (I know, I know... this concert is so NOT Kodály... and that's not a bad thing... because I don't give them musical candy all the time!)

The tech teacher's son actually made the Slimmers... had we more time that would have been a good collaboration with the art teacher.  We originally had them build Slimmers on the 3D printer but they were too small to be seen on stage. Then you'll also see the Spheros... the students had programed them to move in patterns on the stage but the night of the concert we realized we didn't have enough floor space.  So, in the spur of the moment we had to change it on them and they had to manually drive them on the stage.

The highlight of the concert was having the students walk off the stage, picking up a candle flashlight and they walked up the aisles of the auditorium. I was so surprised at how seamlessly this went, provided they had NEVER performed in this space before.  

From the audience they sang "This Little Light of Mine" and it was just tear jerking, there were mom's crying. It was AWESOME!  Really, isn't our goal to make the moms cry at some point (tears of joy, not from any sounds they hear, lol!)

Then, again, the programmed Spheros that, as they faced the stage, started moving forward and gradually turning yellow as they sang "Here Comes the Sun" and they walked onto the stage.  It was awesome, all 146 were on stage by the final verse and it was fun to hear the sound grow and grow as they joined each other to sing the final verse.  I cried... and I don't cry at my kids' concerts...

Were there things that could have gone better? OH YES!  Should I have picked more musically rich songs... maybe... but it was an aesthetic experience that these kiddos were raving about all week. 

I hope you all are having an amazing weekend! Good luck on Halloween Monday! I know I'll need it!

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Perfect Poolside Planning- Concert Planning

I'm so excited to be participating in Lindsay Jervis's Blog Hop called Perfect Poolside Planning!  (Just a note: the hop will officially be ready on Saturday.  If you try to hop through today (Friday) all the links might not be ready yet.)

All the participants are taking on a different element of planning pertaining to teaching music and I have concert planning!  I love planning concerts.  If you notice, I didn't say program planning.  I've got to give you a little background here.

When I started teaching I used those super cute, predone musicals that had speaking parts.  The parents loved them, the kids liked them and I was okay with them.    Now, before I go on, I don't want you to think that I'm going to start bashing pre-made musicals or if you do things differently I don't think what you do is right or wrong.  I'm just going to state where I am in my teaching and what I do.  That's the beauty, we all do things differently and there's no "right or wrong."

I struggled with the pre-made musicals and here's why: I felt that I was spending more time teaching speaking parts and less time teaching music.  When I started teaching I saw my students for an hour a week. Then when I started teaching in my current district I was seeing the students on a 3-day rotation, where the students have music for 45 minutes every 3rd day.  At my current school, as we've grown, some classes are now on a 4 day rotation (music for 45 minutes every 4th day).  Next year?  My 3rd and 1st graders will be on a 5 day rotation.  That means the kids will have music 45 minutes once a week.  I can't rationalize spending time teaching speaking parts, I want my students making music.

So, for MANY years now I've been doing concerts instead of programs.  There are not speaking parts.  And the parents don't complain, in fact they love them.  Again, I'm not right and someone else is wrong.  If you do speaking parts I'm in no way saying that's wrong, I just don't do them.

Okay, now that I have that "out in the open," here's what I think of when planning a concert:

• A theme.  Yep, I don't do a pre-done musical but I do like having a theme that ties the song literature all together.  Often times I will also look at the grade level curriculum that the classroom teachers are working on to see if there's anything I can piggy back on.  For instance, my 2nd graders study weather systems so I did a rain themed concert one year.  The 4th graders study Colorado history so I DO use some Colorado songs that were written by a retired CO music teacher.
• Song literature that fits the theme.
• Song literature that practices known rhythmic or melodic concepts
• Song literature that I will use for preparation of unknown rhythmic or melodic concepts
• Part work: I like to have at least one song in which kids are singing harmony with each other. .. 2nd-5th grades.  SOMETIMES even in 1st grade.
• Instrument work: I like to have one song that the kids accompany themselves on with Orff Instruments.
• Piano: I have a number of students that play piano and at ALMOST every concert I have a student accompanist.  Granted, the accompaniment is sometimes very simple, but they love it and the parents love to see a student accompany the kids.
• Solos: I do like to have at least one song that has singing solos.

Let me walk you through a concert that I'm working on right now.

I mentioned that my 3rd graders will have music ONE time a week (did you hear that?  It was the sound of my heart breaking. . . ugh.  This is my class that sang a two part octavo last year on their second grade concert and did a beautiful job with it.  Do you know how much I was wanting to do with them. . . . maybe I still can but that's really going to depend on amazing lesson planning. . .which you'll read about next on Aileen's blog.)  Sorry for the tangent.  Back to 3rd grade. First I picked a theme.  Their concert is the end of January.  (Yeah, forgot to mention that the first thing I do is set concert dates.  You'll see in my download that I have a check list for you and that's my first thing!)  I was wanting to do "Songs from the Heart" in February but due to Parent/Teacher Conferences I couldn't.  So, last week of January it is and I'm keeping the theme. 

I'm not completely done, but here's what I've got so far:

Yes, I usually do 9-10 songs on a concert. But, with no speaking parts I've got to have music to fill in, lol!

So, it might be hard to read off the worksheet. Here's the songs and any skills/concepts or other notes about the songs:

1. Lazy John- I LOVE this song: 
     
   it's great because I can bring it back the following year in 4th grade for fa, it has solo singing parts AND there's "acting out" parts.  There is a boy and a girl solo.  The girl asks the boy to marry her.  Every time he has an excuse, he doesn't have socks to wear; he doesn't have a shirt to wear; he doesn't have pants to wear, etc.  Then the girl "runs out and gets it".  And every time the girl runs to get something that the boy needs to wear he put it on. I like to have the kids use my dad's old red suit.  It's super cute to see this little 3rd grader getting dressed up in an adult suit but further more, it's a great "seed" for a fa song.
2. There's a Little Wheel a Turnin'- this has an Orff accompaniment
3. Pourquoi- there's multiple verses so this is good for memory work.  I might also be able to add some visual effects to it with scarves on the different colors (maybe each class having a different color and being a different set of birds)
4. Deaf Woman's Courtship- this is too sweet and they will sing it at the beginning of the school year to review do so I won't really have to "teach" this song for the concert.  By the way, with this concert, I have all the boys on one side of the stage and the girls on the other.  So, when the old man asks the woman to marry her all the boys (on stage left) get down on one knee.  Visually  it's very cute.
5. There's a Hole in the Bucket- this will be a review song because we sang it for fun at the end of this year.
6. Shoo My Love- I have an octavo for this so we'll do part work.
7. Mail Myself to You- this is a "novelty" song in that there's not so much purpose behind it on selection because of concept or skill but chosen because it's fun to sing.
8. Love Somebody- they'll learn this in the fall for tika-tika.  Again, it's nice to have some songs that you bring back and it saves concert prep time.
9. The Riddle Song- this will be great when we learn about so pentatonic.  It's really a beautiful, slower song and we might be able to work on a dulcimer accompaniment with it.
10. Love Me Do (maybe?)  or another song. I'd love to think of another one that will work into the curriculum either as a practice or prep song.  I know there's one out there! :)

From there, I scope out how many lessons it will take to prep for the concert and what I want to get done at each lesson for the concert but also allow time for teaching and other work.

You can download my worksheets by clicking here.  A special thanks to Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah Designs for the font and frames! :)

Now, lucky you! You get to hope over to Aileen's blog for some awesome lesson planning tips!  Just click on this image:

Thank you so much to Lindsay for hosting this blog hop!  I hope you enjoy the hop!

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