"Quiet Music"

My district is in the midst of The Big State Test. Literally every space in my school needs to be used for testing, including the room right next to the music room with a thin wall in between. Much of the next few weeks will be spent doing "quiet music class". Yes, music class is not normally a quiet thing. My students always point out to me that music is sound and sound isn't quiet. We all agree it's not our favorite, but it's necessary for the good of the school overall. If it's really nice I try to take students outside, but the gnats and rain have been keeping us in and quiet most of the time. Singing as a whole class can sometimes be quiet enough, but no students playing instruments and low amounts of rambunctiousness are required. Here's a few "quiet music" activities I use with my students:

For upper elementary:

Articles and questions about musicians

I don't do a lot of teaching "about" musicians, so this is a good way (along with sub plans) to squeeze in some contextual information. NewsELA is a great source of articles with pre-written questions, and they have musicians from a wide variety of genres. This year, my students are reading an article about Esperanza Spalding, and one about Lauryn Hill. Once they complete both, they will compare and contrast the two musicians based on what they read in the article.

Videos

I'm typically not one to show a lot of long videos, but quiet music time I am a little more open to using them to keep students engaged, learning and quiet. It's also a really good break for students who have tested earlier in the day and are totally fried. This week, I've been showing a walkthrough of the Benning Violin Factory by Music Express to my students. It's a relatively short video but has led to good discussions about the different string instruments and about careers in music beyond teaching and performance. You can find the video on YouTube here. There are similar videos for other families of instruments, and Music Express also has a video series of composer interviews that are quite good.

For lower elementary:

Echo songs and patterns

For whatever reason, I find my students are able to control their singing volume more effectively when they are echoing rather than singing a song that they already know. The Feierabend book of echo songs is great for this purpose, as are simple tonal and rhythmic patterns. I also challenge students to echo sing a pattern I play quietly on an instrument, which helps them hear and respond to pitch across different timbres.

Move Its

I adore the Move-It DVD! It's a lifesaver when my voice is shot or I otherwise need 2 minutes of engaged focus from younger students. It's especially great when we have to be quiet, since silence is part of my pre-existing procedures for move-its and many of the songs are slower and more relaxing. I'll often do this to settle a class back down if they start to get overexcited and a bit noisy.

Singing Games

Some of my classes enjoy the challenge of staying quiet enough to keep playing a preferred singing game. I always warn them that if they get noisy the game has to stop right away since we want the students testing to be able to focus and do their best work. Usually even the chattiest or most rambunctious class can keep themselves together for five or ten minutes to do a game they really love. Obviously, I don't use games with running or major competitions to set students up for success in staying quiet. Acka Backa, Doggie Doggie, and similar games tend to work well for me.

Quiet music class is definitely not ideal, but when it has to happen there certainly are a variety of options that allow students to keep learning music. I'll definitely be glad when testing season is over and we can bring out the xylophones and drums again! 

Not Mozart's notation: How simplified notation helps beginning band sanity

Music notation is a valuable tool. Music literacy (including the ability to read traditional Western music notation) is an important skill which should be developed in order to help students achieve total musicianship. But lines and spaces are not always the best tool for every context, especially when it comes to popular music. I'm using a score consisting of tables for one of our beginning band songs this year. This song is a popular tune (and a student favorite) with rhythms well beyond what is typically covered in first-year band. Here's my score (note the lack of clefs, note heads, and even rhythm notation):

The lyrics are underneath, but before we get there: can you name that tune? It's certainly harder to sight read without the context of rhythm or meter. However, virtually all of my students have heard this song outside of school. So here's what a student part looks like:

Obviously, a beginning band student isn't going to get a whole lot if they just play those notes. I don't use the parts the first time we touch this song. Once we've learned the main sections (in this case, green blue and red), the written parts act as a memory aid. The small lines next to some of the notes indicate that they're "low" (below the tonic of the song). The dashes in the last line remind students to hold that note (the ending I used seems to be less familiar to students than the main tune). 

The benefit of this system is that students can play rhythms well beyond their reading ability. My group hasn't gotten to individual eighth notes yet, or dotted rhythms, but they can execute both well in the song because they know the tune and are playing based primarily on an aural concept. This "part" serves more as a reminder than something to stare at. Today, a student discovered that after a few weeks of practice, she can play the whole thing from memory! I teach band for the music, not the notation, so using this kind of part has helped my students play music that they care about and perform at a high level without getting caught up in music notation confusion. It's another way (not the best way or the only way) to write music to help student learning.

Band teachers: if you'd like parts and score for this tune, leave your gmail in the comments and I'll share with you.

Lesson Share: The Playlist Project

This post was inspired by the #popmused chat on Twitter, with a question asking about popular music lesson plans. Check out the hashtag here - there's lots of great resources!

I was desperate for lessons without much teacher talk last spring, my voice was shot and allergies were making me struggle, but not be sick enough to call out. My "playlist project" was born when I found a bunch of old mix "tapes" (well, CDs) I had made when I was younger... it was so cool to find songs that went together and tweak the list until it was perfect, then burn it to a CD. Tapes became CDs, and now almost all playlists are virtual, so my students were able to put together a playlist however they wanted.

My students have different levels of background knowledge, so I spent quite a bit of time talking about playlists - what they are, how to put them together, differences between playlists and albums, etc. - and showing a few examples. Then I set my students free to create their own. I was intentionally vague about how the songs on the playlist should be related, but left it up to them how the songs were related. Some great examples students came up with included songs with loud drums (which included rock, hip-hop, and classical music), songs with Spanish lyrics, songs learned on piano, and songs about broken hearts. I used this worksheet to structure students' creating. They used iPads to look up songs as needed, since many of them weren't sure about exact titles or spelling of artist names. Because my school is fairly conservative about language and I wanted my students to have as much freedom as I could give them, the guideline I gave was that the titles and artist names had to be clean, but I wouldn't go searching for inappropriate lyrics.

This project served multiple purposes. For one, it got my students thinking deeply about the music they hear outside of school. It gave me insight into how they think about music, and what music they're exposed to. I was surprised at the number of songs from the 70s and 80s on their playlists, but glad to know that they appreciated and knew some of my favorites. I pulled from their playlists when I could - whether it was for beat-keeping practice or a little movement exploration (always vetting the songs first, of course). I did this late in the year last year, but I'm hoping to do it earlier in the year this year since it helped me build a relationship with my students and understand their musical world.

Feel free to make a copy of the worksheet and use if you'd like!