Auld Lang Syne

Happy New Year!!!  (Okay, I think it's New Year's in Europe right now, lol!  It will be here in the states in 8 hours; 10 hours for here in Colorado).

While I'm waiting for my 2 year old to fall asleep for her nap (which is taking a VERY long time as she's highly anticipating the arrival of her cousins who are coming this evening) I will make true to my promise from yesterday: here's a freebie on my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  It's a PDF of my Auld Lang Syne PowerPoint.

I'm sure you all know the tune:

Since this poem dates back to 1788 and is from Scotland, it has many different versions in regards to the text.  I included the text that I found to be most common in the United States.  Now, just a little history for you: it was written by Robert Burns and is set to the tune of a traditional fold song: specifically Roud #6294.  Roud folk songs come from a collection of nearly 25,000 folk songs that were collected by oral traditional by Steve Roud, a former librarian in the London Borough of Croydon. Auld Lang Syne, the Scot's title which can be translated literally as "old long since," is traditionally associated with New Year's eve but is also popularly sung at funerals, graduations and other ceremonies marking a farewell or an ending to an occasion.

My 5th graders are in full-fledged tom-ti practice mode so I thought this would be a perfect way to welcome them back and dive right into where we left off.  We'll start by singing the song from these slides:

Now, since we've had two weeks off we will take a step back and review how we derived tom-ti from the tie between a quarter note and a single eighth note.  The definition of a tie (connects two notes of the same pitch) will be important later on in the PowerPoint.  (The other reason I want to review this is because in other areas of my lesson, through song literature containing games and instruments, they will be singing and physically and aurally preparing ti-tom  and we will be using the tie again to teach that rhythmic concept):

After the quick review we'll sing the song on rhythm:

This slide has the use of a slur, not only between the tom-ti but also between tas and ti-tis.  This will be something new that we will talk about: the difference between a slur and a tie (from above, a tie connects two notes of the same pitch, a slur connects two notes of different pitches).

The new few slides will be used in the following lesson to practice the extended do-pentatone.

And it's always good to have the students sing the song on absolute pitch names.  One of my New Year's Resolutions is to do a better job of having them practice this on a more daily basis. (SO much to do in 45 minutes!!!):

I wish you all the warmest wishes for a Happy and Healthy 2013!!!  See you next year! :)

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This Train

So, my friend Tanya LeJeune and I visited a teacher store yesterday afternoon.  Really, it was a lot of fun browsing the aisles with a good friend who's also an amazing teacher and getting her opinions on possible manipulatives.  (If you haven't heard of Tanya be sure to check out her website and blog!!  She has some amazing SmartBoard files for download and purchase as well as book suggestions, manipulative ideas and great teaching strategies.)

We came across some really cute die cuts of tickets and then a bigger die cut of buckets of popcorn.  We both bought some, not really knowing what exactly we're going to use them with (don't we all do this from time to time, lol!).  It's been lingering in the back of my mind all day of how I'm going to use them.  Well, I've come up with an idea for the tickets, but it's unrelated to the popcorn so I made a PowerPoint for this idea.

I took the "train" route.  That is, I decided to relate the tickets to a train instead of to relating it to a movie theater or baseball game or such, which is where my mind was originally going.  Engine Engine would have been really cute, but it wouldn't provide a good assessment for the way I'm going to use it because rhythmically all the phrases are the same.  Chicka Hanka would be fun, but it's tricky to use with this because of being a call/response song and a part song.  So, that led me to This Train.  

It's a great spiritual for reinforcing extended do pentatonic and for ti-tom. . . although it's more advance because it has ti-tom tied to a half note.  I will use this in late 4th grade after syn-co-pa and ti-tom have both been presented and we are in late practice of ti-tom.

Here's how it will work.  I print out the following pictures on card stock, cut them into individual tickets and make enough sets of the cards for students to work either individually or in pairs.  By themselves or with a partner they will decode the cards and place them in the correct rhythmic and melodic order.  

You can download the PDF of this file at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

These are the cards that I will use, with both the rhythm and solfa:

If you're wanting to only work on rhythm or melody, use the appropriate card sets below:

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