Still Photos of Junior Music Class

My camera and iPhoto have been filling up with photos I've been snapping during class...time to clear some of them out and share them with you!

Click Here for about one minute's worth of a photo slideshow of Juniors working in class.
See an activity that looks a little peculiar?
Why are there four kids crammed in that one chair?
What are all those rhythmic notes on the floor for?
Ask your Junior to fill you in on what they're doing!

Juniors Set Shel Silverstein to Traditional Melodic Pitches

The first major composition project for this year's Juniors involved setting a Shel Silverstein poem to the solfege pitches of Sol, Mi, and La.

Why those pitches?  Well, they're arguably the ones that are most ingrained in your brain.  Traditional European folk songs, which many of us were exposed to from a young age, are often based in those three pitches.  All the tones in "Rain, Rain, Go Away?"  Those are Sol, Mi and La.  The first phrase of "A Tisket, A Tasket?"  Sol, Mi, and La.  The "na na na na na, you can't catch me" taunt from the playground? These are also Sol, Mi and La.

Having the specified tones clearly in one's brain when composing is a musical act that can be difficult to do.  That made this composition project part ear-training exercise, as well, as the melodies were originally composed with out any help from instruments.

Besides the parameters of a Sol-Mi-La melody, students were encouraged to have a Do-Sol beat or bordun in a low instrument, and then to take the form of the piece (the different sections and how they are combined) and make it their own.  Some students chose to make other sections that switched the melody and the bass, while other students made up dances to accompany the melody, and other students varied their original melody in some way and made that a new section.  Most students also included intros and outros to their pieces.

This clip is about 8 minutes long and shares a sampling of work from Juniors C and Juniors D.

Six Practical Benefits for Arts Education, according to Jerome Kagan

One of the brain research organizations that is well known to arts educators is the Dana Foundation.  They publish research articles and studies about all types of brain research, often with an emphasis in the arts. 

At one of their conferences in 2009, Harvard developmental psychologist Jerome Kagan gave his six favorite practical reasons why the arts are very necessary parts of the school day.  To read a summary of his words, please click here.

All of Kagan's reasons are ones which resonate with me and my motivations for teaching music.  Kagan's second reason, that the arts provide students with a sense of agency, is one that I believe is stressed at the Sage School.  A great deal of the work our students engage in is a demonstration of their own thought processes, from start to finish.  Watching students struggle through the experimentations of what sounds good and what doesn't, which instrument choices help emphasize their musical message and which do not, and seeing them get so very attached to their own pieces and their own thoughtful choices is part of what makes my job so fun!  It often may seem easier and more time-efficient to rush in and solve a problem for a student, or to impose my own judgment on their works.  However, the belief that artistic creation is valuable for its ability to make a student feel like a capable problem solver means that music class is a time where students to work through those experiments to discover an answer that is best for them (even though my ears very often disagree with theirs!)

Juniors D Space Dance Study

Juniors D students have been studying different ways to alter their choreography by changing the space surrounding the dance.  This could mean the physical space they are dancing in, as well as the space between each dancer or movement.  In the assignments you will see students created a 6-8 count dance phrase (about 1 minute) and then altered an aspect of the "space."  Please click on the following link to view the dances.
Juniors D Space Dances

2nd Graders Create Their Own Graphic Novels

Ms. Krikelis' and Ms. Hoffman's students have been working hard in the art room to create their own graphic novels. They studied techniques like building sequences with frames, varying scale, and creating font effects, and even had a visit from Sage's own resident graphic novel guru, Mr. Vega. Click here to view the gallery of their in-progress rough drafts, and check back soon for the final versions!

September Body Percussion Unit in Middle School Music

To start off the year, middle schoolers spent lots of time experimenting with different types of body percussion.  After discovering possibilities like the "nose stomp" and the "golf clap, " trios of students created body percussion pieces and then taught their compositions to their classmates.  

This link will take you to the video compilation which was playing at Back to School Night.  It is about 17 minutes long and shares moments of our body percussion unit.  Clips were taken from 6B, 7A, 8A, and 8B.  Enjoy!