One Last Visit!

I was lucky enough to have one last chance to visit Edgemont Elementary before the end of the semester! It has been so much fun integrating the arts into this first grade classroom. Most of my curriculum focused on Science, but for this lesson I chose to integrate Music and English/Language Arts using the singing game "Sally Go 'Round the Sun."

Click HERE to view the plan for this lesson. To learn more about this singing game, click HERE.

This lesson began by teaching song "Sally Go Round the Sun." The kids picked it up really fast! I think some of them knew the song already. Even so, it was impressive how quickly they picked it up. 

 "Sally Go Round the Sun" is a great singing game because it develops the whole child. In Music Education, we strive to help children grow and develop as a whole person, not JUST where performance of music is concerned! "Sally Go Round the Sun" helps children develop physical coordination and social skills in addition to music and language skills. Learning how to interact appropriately with others in public/social settings is once of the most vital components of early childhood education, and music is just as much a part of that component as any other.

Students were selected at random to play the roles of Sally, the Sun, the Moon, and the Chimney Pot (nobody knows what a chimney pot is, but we don't let that stop us!). Since there are more children than there are parts to play, one of the first things this singing games teaches is the importance of waiting your turn! At the same time, however, there is more than just one person involved at a time, so cooperation and participation are important to this game as well. There is one boy in my class who has been very reluctant to participate all semester. Throughout every stage of the Engineering Design Process lessons, he was reluctant to participate or sometimes outright refused. But on this day, a miracle happened! This student was not only willing, but eager to participate in his role as the Moon. He liked it so much, and it was so great to see him participating and interacting with the others, that I let him stay in that role for most of the lesson instead of switching him with other people. Was it worth it? Absolutely!

The next part of the singing game is for the student playing Sally to go around the Sun, Moon, and Chimney Pot and then get back to his or her spot in the circle right on the word "Boom!". The challenge is to not be late and not be early; this requires an accurate understanding of the timing of the music and the ability to coordinate one's body with that timing. This is another great aspect of this game!

After a few students had gone around, I posed this question to the students: what other ways can Sally move? Sally's gone around the sun, moon, and chimney pot... what about over them? What about though? And so on. We brainstormed a bunch of different words- around, over, through, under, next to, and so on- and the students each took a turn as Sally acting out one of these new words.

      

IMPORTANT NOTICE: I cannot stress enough how important it is to establish procedures before beginning an activity like this! Before an y of the students took their turn as Sally, we went through these simple but important rules:

1. Don’t touch other students without their okay
2. Respect personal space!
3. Be safe! No horseplay or dangerous ways for Sally to move.

Only one these rules were understood and agreed upon did we continue with the game. And it was a great game! Everyone had fun experiencing the different ways to move in relation to the Sun, Moon, and Chimney Pot.

As soon as the game ended, all the children returned to their seats to discuss what they had learned. This was when I introduced the word "preposition"-- AFTER they had already EXPERIENCED it for themselves! Talking about the abstract concept of a preposition as a part of English grammar doesn't make much sense to first graders. But pretending you have to fly over the moon in a singing game- that's something they can experience, understand, and enjoy too! Having this concrete example to inform their notion of the abstract idea of prepositions made it MUCH easier for the first graders to grasp.

This was a super fun lesson and a great way to end my time here at Edgemont Elementary! I have learned a lot from teaching and singing with these kids, and I hope they have learned from me as well. What a great experience this has been!

SHARE: Engineering Design Process Lesson 6

The final lesson in the Engineering Design Process was a big success! I felt like I learned just as much as the children did from teaching this lesson. It was a big challenge, and there are definitely some improvements I would make for next time. But I am so proud of these students and so happy with how this lesson series turned out. It's been a great semester of arts integration!

Click HERE to see my plan for Lesson 6: SHARE.

This lesson, like those that came before it, was designed to highlight and integrate the similarities between the disciplines of music and science. In the performing arts, sharing with an audience what you have created is an integral part of the creative process. I was excited to find, when doing preliminary research, that sharing is also an essential step in the Engineering Design Process. It was this similarity that led to the birth of the entire Engineering Design Series. If an Engineer never shares his or her designs with colleagues, mentors, and peers, much creative inspiration can be lost. So it is with music as well.

With that in mind, here is our ultimate rendition of "I've got a Car:"

One thing that really struck me as I taught the final lesson was how much these students have improved over the course of the last several lessons, even on this simple song! When they first learned this fun folk tune, most of these students were chant-singing (using a speaking voice register) instead of really singing (using a head voice register). Although I noticed this, producing a good vocal tone was not the objective of my lessons, and with limited time I decided it was not something I should take a lot of time to correct. I made a few subtle corrections here and there and frequently changed the starting pitch of the song, to help the children become accustomed to singing it in different keys and different registers. But honestly, I think the thing that helped them the most to improve their tone and begin really SINGING this song was the sheer number of repetitions. Between lessons 3, 4, 5, and 6, we definitely sang this song at least a hundred times. I thought they would get bored. I thought they would stop paying attention to the musical qualities of the song, with everything else they had to focus on. But that's not what happened; those hundred repetitions really had an impact, and the children's singing improved far more than I ever anticipated. As a teacher, that was a wonderful realization!

Before sharing their Maps, which I had collected from the students at the end of the last lesson so they wouldn't lose them, I gave the children their Maps back and had them sing through "I've got a Car" a few times to re-familiarize them with their maps, making sure they could follow along themselves before showing them to their peers. 

           

I scanned each child's Music Map into the computer, projected it onto the SmartBoard, and had the child who created it come up and present his or her Map, one at a time, while the other students sang and traced along.  

 

This activity opened up some really great learning opportunities! One girl was afraid to come up and present in front of the entire class, but she learned to conquer her fear and, with a little help and encouragement, did a great job leading everyone through her map. Another boy traced his map and gave another student a great idea for what he might like to add to a Music Map next time; this led to a brief discussion on how Sharing not only helps us learn, it helps us get new ideas and learn from others as well. Another girl traced a zigzag line at the end of her map and realized he had a few to many zigs; we sang that line of the song together a few times and counted exactly how many zigzags were necessary to reflect the way the music sounds. 

All of this led to a few moments of conclusion, once again, with the Engineering Design Process. After Sharing their maps, many of the students had discovered ways they could continue to refine their designs or gotten ideas for entirely new designs which they could use to start the whole process again. The work of creativity is never finished, but it is worth doing, and it is very rewarding. That, more than anything, is what I hope my students take away from their ArtsBridge Adventure.

CREATE and IMPROVE: Engineering Design Process Lessons 4 and 5

In my next two lessons at Edgemont Elementary we continued our adventures in fun integrative music/science lessons! This time we focused on the fourth and fifth steps of the Engineering Design Process: CREATE and IMPROVE. Because these lessons were so closely connected- even more so than the other lessons in the Engineering Design Process series- I chose to include them in one blog post.

For this lesson, I combined two elements that had been introduced in previous lessons: Music Mapping (as we first learned it, not with icons) and the song "I've Got a Car." After learning about Mapping and becoming very familiar with the song, it was time to put the two of them together and let the kids create their own Music Maps for "I've Got a Car"!


Click HERE to see my lesson plan for Lesson 4, or click HERE to see my plan for Lesson 5.

Before asking the children to make their own Music Maps, we took some time to review the concept and procedures for Music Mapping, as it had been a few weeks since we last did this. We traced Dr. Brittany May's Music Map for Brahms' Hungarian Dance and discussed again the way the lines and shapes on the Map LOOK the way the music SOUNDS.

A Music Map, we decided, is like a treasure map: if nobody can read it, it's not going to help anyone find the treasure (in this case, a better experience with and understanding of the music). Then the class went through a carefully crafted process of learning to create their own Maps.

After this, I showed them several different Maps that I created, all illustrating the song "I've Got a Car:" I avoided doing this until after the students had already had a few simple tries at making their own music maps to this song, because I wanted them to try if for themselves and not just copy what they say me do. Here are the simple Maps I created:

 

For simplicity's sake, we only Mapped the first part of this song.

As we traced these maps, I asked the students to evaluate how easily or how well they felt they were able to read each one. When we reached the last two maps, it was very clear to them that something wasn't right! These maps were not easy to follow at all; they didn't look like the music sounded like. I used this activity to help the students understand by experience that there are LOTS of different and equally good ways to create a music map, but in order to be successful it must LOOK the way the music SOUNDS. Random scribbles do not a Music Map make.

One thing that really helped the kids succeed in this lesson was being able to easily make, erase, and refine drafts of their Maps. Each student had a small personal size whiteboard and marker at his of her desk, and these were very helpful in the Music Mapping process!

The students clearly worked hard that this assignment; it was fascinating to watch them as they sang the song together, traced their maps, sang the song on their own or even audiated it, working and working on their designs. It was the most focused group of first graders I've ever seen!

One of the best things about this lesson in my mind was how clearly it integrated both Music and Science. The first-grades were literally creating and testing their own DESIGNS; this is exactly what the Engineering Design Process is meant to do! After refining their own music maps, each student copied his or her design onto a piece of paper and gave them to me for safekeeping until it was time for the next lesson: SHARE.

Here are a few of the things they came up with:

 

The children clearly worked hard at this lesson, but they also seemed to have a lot of fun. "I've Got a Car" is a surprisingly versatile folk song, especially for being so short and simple, and its fun actions always make it a crowd pleaser with children at this (or really any) age. Everyone was looking forward to the next and final lesson in this series.

CREATE: Engineering Design Process Lesson 3

This lesson may have been my most successful one yet in the Engineering Design Process series. After experiencing OBSERVE and IMAGINE, the next step what to create an opportunity, though music, for my first-graders to experience what it means to CREATE.

To experience this next step in the Engineering Design Process, we began by learning a new song: "I've Got a Car". This fun, modern American folk song has many different applications, which we will explore for the next several lessons!

The best part of the song, at least for first graders, is adding the actions that go along with the B section:

Honk Honk (place hands on hips)

Rattle Rattle (shake hips/body)

Toot Toot (tap your nose with each hand)

Beep Beep (tap each ear with the opposite hand)

This song easily becomes a game to help children experience tempo; you repeat the song faster and faster, flying through the actions as quickly as possible until everyone is basically just slapping themselves in the face and can't possibly keep up! The kids have a great time with this, believe me! Because it has a fairly limited range, this song can also easily be transposed to different pitch levels, which is helpful to keep the children from getting locked into one key. Without even drawing attention to it, you can give them an experience with range and transposition by starting at different pitches, which I did often as we learned and sang this piece.

Click HERE to view my complete lesson plan for Lesson 3: CREATE

Jerome Bruner, a famous educator and learning theorist, holds that whenever people learn something new, we learn it best by progressing through three stages: Enactive, Iconic, and Symbolic. At the first grade level, progressing to the Symbolic level (actual music notation, as pictured above) was not really necessary for this activity. But by beginning with the Enactive stage- singing and acting out the song I've Got a Car- and progressing to the Iconic stage- representing this song with visual icons- the students had a very impactful experience with the CREATE step!


Working together as a class, we selected icons for "Honk" "Rattle" "Toot" and "Beep." This was a bit more complicated than I expected it to be, but it actually turned out to be a good learning experience. This was the assortment of shapes I gave the students to choose from, displayed on a PowerPoint:

A good icon embodies or looks like the thing it represents. After picking out random icons, the students discovered that they had a hard time connecting them with the words they were supposed to represent; they had unknowingly chosen symbols, which have no correlation to the thing the represent, rather than icons. We decided to pick shapes that looked like what the words sounded like, and tried again. Putting the icons in order, this is what we came up with:

Notice how the sharp points of "Honk Honk" and the wavy line of "Rattle Rattle," etc, seem to embody the meaning or feel of those words? That is what makes icons effective. The first-graders practiced reading their icon map several times, singing (the pitches did not change here, only the words) and doing the actions while I pointed at each icon to help them follow along. It was important that they really follow what they saw, rather than just relying on memory, and that became clear as we went to the next step: CREATE a new B section to this song by changing the order of the words and actions!

The first graders loved this idea. It was easy to slide the icons around in PowerPoint in real time to create a new B section, which looked like this:

Can you interpret the icons? This Icon Map reads as follows: "Beep Beep," "Honk Honk," "Rattle Rattle," "Toot Toot." The first graders impressed me with their ability to read and follow this map, singing the right words and actions to go along with their new creation. It wasn't easy- even I made a few mistakes as I got used to the new arrangement- but they loved the challenge and threw themselves into the activity with complete focus.

At the student's request, we created another map, another pattern to tackle:

This one is the ordinary pattern backwards, which made it very tricky to read and perform accurately! It took quite a few repetitions to get this right; I could see the wheels turning in their heads, and by watching them, it was clear they were really READING the icons they saw and responding appropriately, not just going off of memory (because once the order changed, the memory of how they learned the song was no longer helpful).

 Not only were the students able to CREATE a new design, they were able to interpret it as well! They met the objectives of this lesson completely. The lesson ended with a return to the Engineering Design Process Graphic, reminding them that this is just one step which connects to what came before it and prepares them for what will come after. Until next time!

IMAGINE: Engineering Design Process Lesson 2

Last time, we began our adventure of learning about the Engineering Design process through music, particularly Music Mapping. The first lesson in this series familiarized the children with Music Maps and taught them to OBSERVE things about the music by 'reading' (following along with) the Map of the song Coppelia Waltz. This second lesson covered the next step in the Process: IMAGINE.

For this lesson, I created a... unique sort of Music Map, to accompany the song "I Bought Me a Cat" by Aaron Copland. This charming folk song is an add-on song, similar to "The 12 Days of Christmas," with a variety of different farm animals expressed in the music. This video illustrates the Music Map I made and how it plays out in practice:

Note: There was a slight error in this recording, but when I went through this Map with the class, fortunately, everything went off without a hitch.

As you can see, the real fun of "I Bought Me a Cat" is the reveal of each new animal. Keeping the next icon covered up until the last moment keeps the students very engaged, and gets them wondering and even predicting what might come next. It was precisely this curiosity that I took advantage of to teach about the "Imagine" step of the Engineering Design. Here is the lesson plan I created for this experience:

Click HERE to view my complete lesson plan for Lesson 2: IMAGINE


This lesson required some extra help from Mrs. Amesse, who played and paused the recording in the appropriate spots. It took a little bit of coordination, but she was a great help to me in this! The students were very participatory; they had a great time making predictions about what the next animal would be, what sound it would make, how MANY times it would make that sound, and so on. Overall this lesson went well, but there were a few things I would definitely change or improve on before teaching it again:

One issue I had in teaching this lesson was getting the volume turned up on the class media system; I did not take enough time to practice in the classroom and make sure I could handle any technology issues, and I wasn't able to figure out how to get the volume turned up in the moment, and as a result the recording was a little bit too quiet. In someways this was an unanticipated benefit, because the children REALLY had to be quiet and listen carefully in order to follow along; however, I definitely would have preferred to have the volume louder. The next time I went in to teach, I made sure to arrive earlier so I could have enough time to solve those problems (it was more difficult than it seems!). I am a BIG believer in preparation, and this experience only served to reinforce that lesson for me!

The more time I spend teaching these first graders, the more classroom management skills I learn. I've talked about the theory and "how to's" of classroom management in school, but there really is no substitute for actually being in front of a group of children and trying it out! In this lesson, rather than saying "Who can tell me about such-and-such," I made my questions more direct by asking, "Jessica (not her real name), can you tell me about such-and-such?" This was very helpful because it cut down on a lot of the talking out of turn that happens whenever you ask first graders a question and expect them to raise their hands. Sometimes they do remember to raise their hands- they really are trying- but they're so young and so eager, holding back an answer is nearly impossible for many of them unless someone else is specifically called upon to answer.

The closing activity for this lesson was to give the students a brief opportunity to try their hands at making music maps. I think in my lesson plan, I wasn't clear enough about the objective of this activity. It was NOT to teach them to produce a Music Map or be able to successfully create one. That will come later on. At this stage, the objective was merely to get the students thinking musically, thinking in sound and how they might represent it. They had to imagine their own ways of interpreting the song "I Bought Me a Cat."As I walked around the classroom assessing their work, it became clear that I was right not to expect the children to be able to produce their own map yet. Some of the students were unable to understand the difference between my specific Music Map and any Music Map in general; when asked to Map "I Bought Me a Cat," they simply copied exactly what I had done on the board. Some students, though, really were beginning to get it; it was amazing to me that I could see that from what I drew, but it was really obvious from looking at their drawings! From this assessment I determined that further exposure to Music Mapping would be necessary before trying an activity like this again. The students clearly need numerous sensory experiences to be able to understand this concept abstractly, and I kept that very much in mind while preparing my next lesson. Can YOU imagine what that lesson might be about?

OBSERVE: Engineering Design Process Lesson 1

As an ArtsBridge Scholar, I've been thinking a lot about cross-discipline integration. My purpose in coming to teach at Edgemont Elementary is to integrate the arts- specifically music- into the everyday classroom. Mrs. Amesse has been wonderful in giving me a lot of freedom to decide what that means to me and how to approach Music Integration. She gave me the suggestion to focus on integrating music and science, since that is one of the major focuses in the first grade classroom this semester.

As I've developed my plan for the semester, I want to be careful not to undervalue either discipline. I don't want to use music merely as a vehicle for teaching science; I believe music is important and valuable in and of itself, and that the students' lives will be enriched by learning how to understand and interact with music. At the same time, I believe what the esteemed music educator Bennett Reimer said about integration (though he preferred the term interrelation):

"...understandings about music are deepened and broadened when related to other human endeavors both similar (although not identical) and different."

I have developed a series of lessons integrating Science and Music in a way that I feel honors both disciplines, helping the children increase their understanding in both domains. This lesson sequence is based around the Engineering Design Process.

The Engineering Design Process is one of the things Edgemont Elementary focuses on in their science curriculum. It is similar to the Scientific Method, but with a few clear differences. Through these integrated lessons, students will learn about and apply each step of the Engineering Design process in musical ways, increasing their understanding of both Science and Music.

 Each lesson will center around one step of the Engineering Design Process, using musical activities to help the students EXPERIENCE each concept.

Lesson One was all about Observation, which we defined as "Looking and Listening."

Click HERE to view the complete lesson plan for Lesson 1: OBSERVE.

This lesson used a Music Map- a way of iconically representing how music sounds- to give the first graders experience with the concept of observation. This video demonstrates how Music Maps work (and it is the same piece of music, Coppelia Waltz, that I used in my lesson)

The idea of a Music Map is that it LOOKS like the music SOUNDS. The purpose of using a Music Map in this lesson was to encourage the children to use multiple senses- particularly their ears and eyes- to observe and make connections about what was happening.

After showing the music map, I asked the children what they had observed, and it was amazing to see how well they understood.

"You followed the music!" one child said. "You listen with your ears and you look at it, so you can follow it! We look at the lines so we could follow the music!" It made me smile to see how excited he was about his discovery.

"I noticed that you followed along, and the music went exactly where the lines were," said another student.

They also noticed patterns, parts that went fast, parts that went slow... after giving the students a few chances to practice, I called a volunteer up to be the pointer so I could do some observing myself and assess the class. By watching them, I was encouraged to see that most of the kids were getting it; they were understanding the link between the music and the map, and this showed in their actions as well as the comments they made.

This is just the first step, of course. Additional lessons to come will teach more about what to do with the observations they made. I'm looking forward to teaching the rest of the steps in this Engineering Design Process!

Getting to Know the Kids: Hickety Tickety and Al Citron

My next visit to Mrs. Amesse's class was to get to know the kids - and of course, we had to do so with music!

The Room

Mrs. Amesse has a nice, large classroom with plenty of space for kids to move, learn, and grow. I took some pictures of the room after a day of "indoor recess" due to cold, rainy weather, so the kids had been playing with lots of puzzles, blocks, etc. What fun!

There's a place for desks...

A great Smartboard setup....

A garden station where the kids have been growing their own plants from seeds for science...

And my favorite part of the room, a large floor area with lots of room for everyone to sit on the colorful rug!

For this lesson, we spent our time on the rug, playing a get to know you game called Hickety Tickey and another called Al Citron.

Hickety Tickety

This is a great music game to play with young children! The tune is simple, short, and easy to learn. There are two basic ways to teach a new song in Elementary Music: "By Note" or "By Rote." Teaching"By Rote" comes in two forms: phrase-by-phrase or immersion. For a short song like this, immersion is preferable. One of the fundamental requirements of teaching by rote is that you give the children a chance to hear the song ALL THE WAY THROUGH at least THREE TIMES before asking them to sing it themselves. The three repetitions give the children a chance to become familiar with the song, or 'get it in their ears,' before being asked to sing it. The tricky part is, children have short attention spans and will quickly become bored if you just sing to them over and over again! 

The solution to this problem is to keep the children's attention AND help them learn the song more efficiently by asking discovery questions. These can be very simple, but they really work! Here are some discovery questions I used:

"What question am I asking in this song?"

"Will you raise your hand when you hear the lowest note in this song?"

The key to success with discovery questions is to ask them BEFORE each repetition of the song. This is a classic example of teaching through problem solving: you present a challenge or problem, and kids can't help but try to solve it. It's human nature. Asking a discovery question before you sing draws their focus, so they really listen as you sing to them. Discovery questions are a great way to get in disguised repetitions (which are exactly what they sound like). Disguised repetitions make all the difference in teaching a song by rote- and they continue to be important all the way through secondary grades and ensembles, as well!

Another good technique for keeping children engaged and listening as they learn a new song is to involve them kinesthetically. I did this by having them keep the beat with me while I sang. We kept the beat by tapping the ground lightly with the fingertips- not heavy, not hard, just a light tapping. Children are naturally musical (they might not know it, but all children have some music in them!) and I didn't have to explain to them "This is the beat, this is how often to tap," etc. I just modeled it for them and they jumped right in. No need to overcomplicate things. 

After tapping along with me, answering discovery questions, and listening to the song all the way through three times, the children were ready to sing along. They jumped in eagerly and sang along with me: "Hickety Tickety bickety bame, will you please tell me your name?" We went in around the circle to each child, pointing with two hands like an arrow to avoid making anyone feel uncomfortable with pointing fingers. Each child said his or her name, and then we repeated all the children's names in order. This was extremely helpful for me! I got lots of repetitions and lots of chances to learn the names of each child, and they had a lot of fun tapping, pointing, and singing along while developing their musical abilities.

Al Citron

The second game we played was one that I'll probably save for older children in the future. Although keeping the beat by tapping their fingers on the carpet was no problem for these first-graders, taking it to the next level was quite a challenge! In Al Citron, children keep the beat by passing an object (in this case, a small plastic cup held upside down) to their neighbor in time with the music. Grab, pass, grab, pass, grab, pass, on each beat. The children knew were the beat was, but keeping everyone coordinated enough to pass and grab and get a cup FROM your neighbor, then pass it TO the next neighbor, in time with the music, was pretty overwhelming for them! One cup had a small star on the bottom; the intention was to sing the song multiple times and I would guess the name of the child who ended up with the starred cup. Despite numerous cup pile-ups, we did make it through the song and the children seemed to enjoy it. The objective of learning names was accomplished, and the kids had fun, but I don't feel that this song was an effective music teaching experience. Next time I'm playing musical get to know you games, I'll look for a more appropriate intermediary step, a way to up the difficulty level from Hickety Tickety enough to challenge the first graders without overwhelming them.