Animal Adaptations

Hello again! I'm back! Jordan Ridge is back from being off track, and I've returned to (somewhat) full health after being a bit ill last week.

I emailed Ms. Wright prior to this class and asked her what things the class was learning about that might be interesting to teach to music. One of the things she mentioned was that they were learning about animal adaptations in science. I love animals, so this was a fun lesson for me to plan.

When I was planning, I found a couple somewhat strange, yet entertaining music videos about animal adaptations.

"The hump on my back is packed with fat, won't say it again cause you know all that."- rapping, dancing animated camel.

These...uh... didn't exactly make the cut, but they were entertaining nonetheless- hah! I was singing both songs to myself as I was planning my lesson. ♩ adap, adaptaaationss...♩

For my real lesson, we started out with the clapping/listening game again. The students have responded well to it, so I did a little bit more with it this time. I clapped three songs, and told the students to think about what they all had in common. The songs were:

1) Baa Baa Black Sheep
2) Old MacDonald
3) The Itsy Bitsy Spider

Of course, the topic here was animals! This helped me segway into the next part of my lesson.

I told them that I'd heard they were learning about animal adaptations in science class, and I asked them what they were, and what some examples were. They were hesitant at first, but once Ms. Wright hopped in and referenced a chart they had done, the hands were flying up.

After this little conversation, I handed out a worksheet to the kids (my first worksheet! Oh boy!).

I put the top half up on the document camera, and we sang through the song (to the tune of "Are You Sleeping?"). A little more singing-friendly than the rap videos from earlier...

I then told them that they got to compose a song about animal adaptations. I told the students what measures were, and had them compare the first and second measures (same), third and fourth measures (same), fifth and sixth measures (same), and seventh and eighth measures (same- surprise, surprise!). This is a little precursor to identifying the form of a piece, if you will.

In retrospect, I could have taken it a step further and assigned letters to each section, but oh well. I'm in this to learn also, aren't I? That's my favorite part about teaching- that I can grow and improve as I help students grow and improve. It's a beautiful cycle, really.

Anyway, the worksheets were a little interesting at first. I had the students get into partners to write the song. We wrote an example one together as a class first, because I could sense that some of the students were confused. I somehow managed to walk away from the school without the example one, so no picture here... sorry. :(

Once the example one was done, I walked around and helped partners as needed. Some groups were done in two minutes, and it took a few others a while to get loose and into the creative process. However, as time went on, they really got the hang of it and responded really well....

Love that this girl added a picture at the bottom.

LOVE that this student decided to write a second verse. Another student wrote an additional verse about a dinosaur, but I didn't get a picture of it. Sad!

We sang through ALL of them (which was a little rough on my weak, sick voice- but worth it!!), and the kids LOVED it. They were SO excited to get to the next song to see what people wrote. One of my favorite things about this is that some of the kids who had been struggling with writing these really responded so well once we began singing through all of these. They were able to finish the rest of their verses quickly when we started doing the other kids' songs. It was nice to see these kids be inspired by their peers.

Jane, my mentor, was visiting class on Friday with me and suggested that the students draw pictures of their animal and turn it into a book! So fun. So Ms. Wright kept the worksheets with her to do just that. I'm excited to see the end result there.

It was amazing to see these kids go from being unsure about the project to downright excited. At the end, all the kids (and I really do mean all of them) wanted extra worksheets so that they could write more verses! Luckily I had over-prepared and printed about 50 worksheets.

But my goodness. Hooray! I love helping kids love music. That's really why I do what I do. Looking forward to more fun and music-loving this Friday.

- Amanda

Teaching Day Four: Listening Day

Happy New Year from Fourth-Grade me!

So, I had a TON of fun during this lesson. The week before coming in, I emailed the teacher to ask what she might want me to do with the students, and she mentioned that it might be good to just give them a lesson on some basic elements of music. I thought that a good way to help get the student excited about music, and to really tune into it, would be to have a listening day.

I started off with a little listening warm up. I clapped the rhythm of a few different familiar childhood tunes, and had the students guess what I was clapping. To help them along, I moved my hands up and down with the pitch changes. I believe I did "Happy Birthday", "The Wheels on the Bus" and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." It worked quite well!

After getting their ears warmed up, I showed them a picture of me and my husband. The students in the class have been told quite a few times that I'm going to school to become a teacher, so I thought I would "introduce" them to my husband and what he is going to school for as a way to transition into the next part of my lesson.

The conversation went a little like this:

Me: This is a picture of me and my husband, Nick! He's a really cool guy.

Boy in back: Is he an NBA player??? (I love fourth graders, oh my gosh.)

Me: Not quite... but he is going to BYU with me. I'm going to school to be a music teacher, and he's going to school to be a movie director!

Class: Ooooh!

I then told them that we watch a lot of movies at our house, and that we talk about them a lot, too! And since I love music, and he loves movies, we talk about movie music quite a bit (this is 100% true stuff, y'all).

We then listened to a few examples of movie music that the kids might recognize...

(The whole playlist is embedded at the bottom of my post! These YouTube links are just a couple of the songs I showed them.)

While we listened to clips of the songs, I had the students think about and answer a few questions: Why do movies have music? How do different songs make you feel? What about the songs make you feel that way? How does one track differ from the other? What instruments do you hear? 

My goal here was to really get the students listening/ critical ears on. One of the standards for Utah's Music Core is "Listening: The student will listen to, analyze, and describe music." 

Along with this, I decided to introduce the students to some of the recommended pieces on the core's list (see previous link). 

To do so, I had the students do an activity that I did in my Intro to Music Education Class (Music 275). Dr. Broomhead, the resident music literacy/ General Music-guru, had our class listen to a few tracks of music as though they were "soundtracks". Our class of 20-somethings loved it, so I was eager to do this activity with the ripe imaginations of fourth graders.

I passed out pieces of paper, and had them fold it into thirds (one section for each of the songs). I gave them one rule: no talking while the music is playing(!) , and told them to write down/ draw what each of the pieces would be a soundtrack to. I had them think about things like "What kind of movie would this be a part of?", "Who is there at the scene?", "How are the characters feeling?", etc. 

Then, I turned on minute and a half/ two minute clips of each of the following pieces of music... 

... and then we talked about the results! I'm including some examples of the drawings/ notes here on my blog. Fourth grade is such a fun, imaginative age! I loved hearing what they came up with during class, and I loved reading their responses later as well.

Love this "Rite of Spring" response. 

Anyway, that's it for a couple weeks! There is a school-wide Geography Bee on Friday that interferes with me coming, and then they go off track! I'll be back in mid-February.

Thanks for following along on my adventure, everyone!

- Amanda


P.S.....

(If you clicked on the Utah Core link earlier, you'll notice that Rite of Spring is not on the list of recommended listening. I decided to include it merely because I was so intrigued at what the kids would come up with for this one, so I didn't want to pass up that chance to find out!)

Bonus: Here's the Spotify Playlist I used!

Day Three

I especially enjoyed this third lesson! I think the students are getting more used to me being in the classroom with them. I also feel like I'm getting a better grip on my classroom management skills. I was able to bring the kids to attention much more quickly this time than I have before. Because of that, we were able to get a lot done!

This time around, we sang the classic camp song "I Love The Mountains". I grew up hearing this one at church camps, so it brings back some fun memories for me. Of course, I grew up in flat Texas. So I never really lived around mountains until coming to BYU! But these fourth graders have mountains all around them.



I feel a little bad, because I totally blanked on teaching the "integration" part of "arts integration" for this round. It was in my plan, but I completely forgot to talk about it, maybe because I like this song so much. The students are learning about the Mountain Men of Utah, and I was going to talk a little about that and the natural landscapes that Utah has. I did, however, briefly let the class know that Texas hardly EVER has snow, and they seemed a little blown away by that.

Regardless, we started out by learning the song all together. Instead of having the sheet music up on the document cam this time, I had my iPad up there instead with a little minimalist drawing of the lyrics. I think that the student's might have learned the notes a bit more solidly with the sheet music (you'll see that it's a bit rocky in the video), but it was a fun experiment anyway! And it was a good way for me to teach by rote a little bit more than usual.

After we learned the words, I had the kids decide on movements for each of the lines of the lyrics... because moving to music is fun! That part was really fun for me, and for the class. It got them involved in thinking and being creative. Everyone had a lot to say, and I could tell that they were all excited to be involved in this process. I had originally planned on just teaching them movements that I found online, but I'm really, really glad I got them involved. I'll definitely be doing something like that again.

Once they were solid on their moves, we sang the piece in a round! They did so well with it during the round for "My Paddle", I decided to bring that back. It worked pretty well. Like I said, the notes were somewhat shaky, but it held together overall. And they had fun, and were making music. I certainly can't complain about that.

For this round, I divided the class into four groups. Each group did the same movements to the verse of the song, but during the "boom-de-yada" refrain, each group put their heads together to come up with a unique movement to their group. It was really fun to see what everyone came up with. There was a lot of personality in those boom-de-yadas, and I loved seeing everyone's personal touches to the song.

This was probably my favorite lesson so far! I loved seeing so much personality in the kids. Getting them more involved in the creative process was absolutely fantastic. That is my favorite part about music, and I'm really glad that I got to help these fourth graders experience it first hand.

Great lesson, and great kids! I'm excited for what 2016 will hold.

- Amanda Ritter

Teaching Day TWO

Hello again!

For my second teaching day, I decided to sing a classic folk song, "Buffalo Gals". After singing the song through a couple of times, I talked a little bit about buffalo, and how they're native to Utah.

However, a few students corrected me, and let me know that "nope, they're called bison, buffalo don't live here!" Dang it. Those kids are too smart. I always thought that buffalo and bison were interchangeable! I now know to double check my facts before teaching the students false doctrine.

And, I learned something else today, and that thing was that fourth graders do NOT like linking arms with people of the opposite gender! Whoops.

We played a little song game for Buffalo Gals, and the boy/girl thing really just got thrown in my face.

I had the students walk around in a circle with me (ideally to the beat) for the verse part of the song, with one student walking on the inside of the circle in the opposite direction of the students. The idea was that when we got to the chorus ("Oh buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight?"), the student in the middle would link arms with the person they were standing next to, and walk together in the inner circle. Of course, no one was crazy about actually touching a classmate of the opposite gender, hah! You can kind of see that in the video some. When we get to the chorus, the boy in the middle is next to a girl, and the whole class reacts to it. Oh boy.

Eventually, we just compromised and I had the kids just walk side by side. Close enough, right? I'm re-learning a lot what it's like to be nine years old...

It was still really pretty fun, though! One student was especially excited that we were singing this, and he volunteered to teach the class a new verse that he knew from a talent show he was doing. It was kind of fun to venture off the planned path a bit, and include this student's verse in there as well. I think it helped the students really feel more connected to each other, and to the song.

I'm enjoying my time in the classroom quite a bit! Teaching is wonderful, and so are the kids in the class. As always, looking forward to next time!

- Amanda Ritter

First Teaching Day!

Now that I'm back from Christmas break and have turned in the proper documents, I am able to start posting on here about my amazing experience with the fourth graders in Ms. Wright's class. Woo hoo!

I showed up to my first day excited, and a little unsure of what to expect. So, to ease into things, we started out with a little rhythm/ name game. Sitting in a circle, we did a clap-pat-clap-pat beat pattern. I started out by saying (to the beat) "My name is Mrs. Ritter, and I like to sing!" The students chanted back, "Her name is Mrs. Ritter, and she likes to sing!" I still can't believe I get to be called that! I love teaching.

Anyway, we continued around in the circle with each kid chanting their name, and a little bit about themselves. It was a good, quick way for me to get in there with the kids and for us to become a little more familiar with each other.

For the arts-curriculum-integration section of the lesson, we sang the song "My Paddle". I put up the song and words on the document camera, and sang through it with the kids a few times. They picked up on it really quickly. This is a really sharp, musically inclined group of students!

We sat down and talked for a little bit about how the Utah Native Americans (Utes, Navajos, Shoshones etc.) may have gotten around Utah's waters using canoes. We talked about what waters those might be- Utah Lake, Great Salt Lake, Provo River, Jordan River, Bear Lake, etc. And then, I had them sit in lines of four and paddle to the beat of the song while we sang.

I was a little scared to try having the kids sing the round so soon after learning the melody, but they were beyond enthusiastic when I brought it up! And they THRIVED at singing it in this way. I had them first sing in two groups, then three, and then eventually four. They loved it. What a fun way to end a lesson!

I'm beyond pleased with how working with these kiddos has gone, and I'm looking forward to the future!

-Amanda (AKA MRS. RITTER!)