Daffodils start sprouting,

Rain comes showering down,

A joke, a stroke of laughter

And then there’s snow, a frown.

A jazzy rhythm’s happen’n

And poems fill the air

April’s now upon us

There’s so much to do, to share!

I’ve come to realize how much I really love April.  Not just because it sends us the first signs of spring or teases us on April Fool’s Day with snow (actually, I really didn’t think that was funny), but because of all the great things you can share with your students through April.

Two themes I carry throughout the month of April in my classroom are Jazz and Poetry.  April is both National Poetry Month and Jazz Appreciation Month.  YAY!  What fun!

It is in April that I start my unit on American music during my Active Listening time.  We begin with the blues and start making our way through Ragtime, Big Band, Jazz Standards and end up in Rock and Roll sometime in May and moving through June.  Last week, we started the Blues and in honor of our Science unit on “Land and Water” I had my students listen to “Back Water Blues” sung by Irma Thomas.  The original is sung by Bessie Smith about the flooding of New Orleans in 1927.  We listened to a song for an entire week and I was reminded of why we do that by my own students.  On the first day, I played the song and their reaction was less than favorable.  I could see their scrunched up faces and their distaste for the song and its singer.  But day after day we listened, dissecting it: first in the lyrics, then in the form, figuring out the story being told and listening for the instrumentation.  By the time Friday rolled around, they were all singing along, rocking their heads, snapping their fingers and tapping their toes.  The blues was speaking to them and in some cases, through them!

This is why I listen to music with my students and trust the process of having them listen to music repetitively for a week.  I can’t wait to share more music with them through the month and see what insights come out of it.

Poetry is another source of work and fun for April.  My eyes were opened wide to the world of poetry after taking a class in it for my Master’s degree.  I learned many ways to write poetry which took the intimidation factor out of it for me.  This year I am doing something I have always wanted to try with my class: have each student write a poem a day.  It is going to fit will with the reflection time I am giving them at the end of each day.  Instead of writing a reflection of the day in prose, they will do so in poetry.  Dada poetry, found poems, list poems (all of which I will describe in a later post): these and other forms of poetry will provide the students with a variety of options to try throughout the month and challenge them to write, write, write!

Needless to say, April brings about many opportunities for fun and learning.  I’m looking forward to sharing some of the things I will be trying with my class.  Please comment and share your stories as well!

~EMP

P.S.  If you’re from Massachusetts, you may take advantage of celebrating “Patriot’s Day” the annual commemoration of the start of the Revolutionary War.  If not from Mass, you still might want to talk about this important April date in some way. 

Related posts:

1. Jazzy DADA
2. When You Can Make it Jazz – Creativity through Rigor
3. Teacher Field Trip-Beat Night-Jazz and Poetry

This past week, my students and I had a great experience as we created a makeshift recording studio in our school and recorded an original piece of music: The Erosion Blues.

It is a great example of integration, collaboration and freedom in structure.

Integration: The blues was meant to be a culminating project for our unit on Land and Water which focuses on erosion. Students were to explain a type of erosion (water, wind or ice) and use some content vocabulary to show they know the meaning of the words.

Collaboration: The music teacher taught the students the form of the 12 bar blues in music class. In fact, nearly all the students are able to play the structure on xylophones (Orff Instruments) and some were even taught it on recorder. In our recording, you only hear piano and vocals, but there may be an opportunity for the kids to lay down another track or two at their next music class!

Freedom in Structure: The 12 bar blues creates one structure in which we sung our lyrics, but there is another structure that helped focus the small groups of 3-4 students to compose the lyrics. They follow a simple AAB form which means there is a line of lyrics (A) that is repeated (A) and then a different set of lyrics (B) completes a verse. The ends of lines A and B rhyme. For example:
A – Rivers can erode rocks, mountains and canyons wear away.
A – Rivers can erode rocks, mountains and canyons wear away.
B – It still erodes, no matter what you say!

The After Effects:
I asked my students to reflect on their experiences as we drafted, practiced and recorded our blues song. Here are some of their words:
“I thought it was fun because everyone had a lot of enery and was able to share it.”
“It made me feel special…made me feel musical and unique.”
“It was fun because when we sang the chorus, everybody was singing.”
“I want to do something like this again. The blues is fun.”

My students, in general, are excited about the blues. In fact I have two girls who are actively writing their own blues lyrics. One is completed and posted here and the other girl is presently writing her own “Moving Blues” about her family’s move to another house.

This lesson transitioned me from our TIC focus last month in “Creating Community” to this month’s “Freedom in Structure”. It was one of those experiences that fed off of my talents and those of my students: from the students volunteering to sing out loud to the boys in charge of the recording device (my netbook powered by Audacity). The smiles were big and the excitement was contagious. There was a lot of inspiring going on!

Here are all the links you may be interested in. Please check them out and leave your comments. I will share them all with my class.
LYRICS
Erosion blues 1 by eliza_peterson

Other posts in reference to this project:
Musical Experiences – Composing in the Classroom

Balancing Testing with Creativity

Related posts:

1. Musical Experiences – Composing in the Classroom
2. Balancing Testing with Creativity
3. It's All About Experiences

Community building in the educational profession is important for teachers, students, administration, staff, parents and the whole community. This month, I have enjoyed reflecting about how I try to build community in my classroom with my students. In the future months, the topic of community will certainly be further explored.

What I have discovered and rediscovered is that the biggest part of building community is in creating experiences with your students. When I stop and take time and really DO something with my class, the benefits are nearly immediate. We smile together, laugh together, realize things together but mostly we share – share a common experience with one another. It’s a beautiful thing…

Just yesterday, I was able to share a great experience with my class as we continued to write our Erosion Blues. There I was playing the piano as groups of students came by and started singing the lyrics they had written. As I looked up, I saw the rest of my class singing along, tapping their feet, moving and dancing – PURE JOY! Wow! That will be a memory for all of us.

I know a second grade teacher who is not afraid to bring her students outside during the school day. No worries about not sticking closely to the plan for the day, because she knows how much her students will get out of an outside experience. This is not a teacher who one would call aloof, her feet are firmly set and she is very serious about education. The thing is that she is certain that her students will benefit from a common experience and from that experience she shapes ways for her students to learn. They learn about nature and about the value of getting inspired by something. Oftentimes their experiences are what prompt them to write – to really write from the heart and gut.

When we have a true experience, then we can really learn more about ourselves and others. And that’s one thing that can really help build community!

Related posts:

1. Musical Experiences – Composing in the Classroom
2. Musical Experiences – Listening in the Classroom
3. Reflections on Beat Night – Poetic Experiences

Our MCAS test begins today. Three days of testing in ELA (English Language Arts). Today, students are asked to write a personal narrative and the other two days, students will be given all other means of ELA testing: reading selections, multiple choice, essay response (open response), grammar, conventions, etc.

I do agree with these types of tests. That is, I do agree that students need to be proficient in these skills. However, the approach and the stress on these scores, I do not, but that’s another blog, another day. These tests are a reality for me and teachers across the country and it is during this time that we need to get into high gear as teachers and help our students balance themselves and their minds with some time for fresh air and creativity.

This is also a great time to build community in my classroom. Not only are we “in this together” as we prepare for and take the test, but the activities I choose to do when not testing this week can be crucial to community building.

One activity I will be doing is having students move before testing, during breaks and after testing. And by moving I mean having the students do a combination of aerobics, sports drills, dance and Tae Bo moves I’ve learned along the way. This is fun for me too! I get to do everything from “high knees” to plies in the classroom with my students. It gets our blood pumping and helps us to refocus. (BTW – a tip I’ve learned is to have students move their limbs across their bodies for the best “brain wake up”.)

In the afternoons this week, I will also be working with my class to compose some music! We will be writing the Erosion Blues as a culminating project for our unit on land and water. Integrating with our music teacher has helped prepare the kids for this composition experience.

We already began yesterday morning by taking time to listen to some blues music together, discovering how blues lyrics are written (A,A,B) and starting to write our lyrics to fit the form. The kids are excited about this, especially at the idea that we will (hopefully) have a completed song to record by the end of the week…maybe even with instruments!

Taking this time throughout the week to work on things collaboratively will help us to balance out the severity of the test and more importantly, will help us to bond as we create something new together.

For more about the blues project, visit Composing in the Classroom.

Related posts:

1. High Stakes Testing
2. Building Creativity, Community and Character Through Music
3. The Process

In the spirit of Music in Our Schools month, I would like to reflect some more on how music can build community, this time through composition. With MCAS (Massachusetts’s high stakes test) next week, I think it is necessary to give my students a balance of testing with play. We WILL go outside and run around more than usual, but I also have something fun, creative and collaborative planned – composing some blues!

Well, yes, I could ask them to write the “testing blues”, but that would be the wrong way to focus their energy! Instead, we will write the Erosion Blues as a culminating activity to our unit on Land and Water.

COLLABORATION – My fourth graders will already have a basic understanding of the blues from what they learn in their music class. They learn and play the 12 bar blues. In fact when I wrote this form on the board yesterday, they clearly remembered it and were ready for a refresher. This kind of integrated project is one that I always strive to implement – one that is true to the integrity of the art form and to the curriculum I am teaching. It also provides a time for real collaboration between myself and the music teacher. She has given them a basis of knowledge in the structure of the blues and I’m going to bring other content to the table. Together, the students will synthesize two important areas of study.

CREATIVITY WITHIN A STRUCTURE – The blues has a relatively easy form for writing lyrics: AAB. For each verse there are three lines of lyrics. The first line is (A), then (A) repeats itself, and the last line is different (B). Once students know this basic form, they can really get creative. I will assign a group of students a specific topic in erosion (water erosion, ice erosion, wind erosion, other vocab terms to use) and let them compose.

COMMUNITY – This type of project, where students create together will surely add to the sense of community. With each verse, students will be collaborating as they show what they know about erosion. The part I am looking forward to is hearing how it will all come out in the end. Each group will perform their verse, creating one unified song through the structure of the blues. And for some added greatness, some students will be able to play the 12 bar blues on Orff instruments from the music room.

This musical experience of composing a piece of music is something I’ve been looking forward to doing with my students. (This year I have a particularly musical class.) It is my hope that I’ll be able to post a performance online. More to come!

Related posts:

1. Musical Experiences – Playing in the Classroom