I love pinterest. It is a wonderful way to research travel, find a new recipe, or discover teaching ideas for pretty much any classroom. I have never shared anything on pinterest of mine, but I truly enjoy looking at other ideas and creating boards for my general music classroom and chorus. A favorite game my younger sister and I use to play together was Guess Who?. She and I would set up our boards directly across from one another (I always wanted to be blue, my favorite color), choose our person card, and play as many rounds as we could; we played games constantly in my home growing up. I decided after seeing another music teacher post an instrument version of Guess Who? that I needed to do the same as a fun way for kids to review instruments and their families! These boards have been sitting in my classroom for quite awhile, and I kept putting off the fun part; creating the new and improved music version! Now that I have a bit more time in between zoom meetings and creating youtube videos for distance learning, I have decided that a project I want to take on is improving childhood games in a musical way. I plan to do this with other games such as Candyland, Don't Break the Ice, Jenga, and more. For Guess Who?, I tried to find the original 1998 version (better quality in my opinion) but I had to settle for a newer version found on Amazon. It is cheaply made, but works decently. There is a template available for purchase on teacherspayteachers.com as well, but I chose to make my own. Please see below a few of the steps I've taken to create this instrument review version of Guess Who?. I found free instrument clipart through a simple google search. I then measured my board pieces with a ruler, copy and pasted said clipart, and resized them on the google docs as best I could. I added a black border to each clipart picture as well and had to trim down some more than others depending on the shape. After I cut out each picture, I took a glue stick and glued each one on top of the board faces. Sometimes, my sizing worked out perfect, sometimes you could see a bit of blue. I did this with both the blue and red board. Once you put them in the board, it doesn't seem to matter much. I then put each instrument into the board in a random order. I did the red and blue side by side to be sure that the instruments were as random as possible. Please note that I did not label the instruments on the board, but I will be on the cards they choose themselves. This game will be a review to see what they remember about each instrument by sight. The finished product! I did the same for the blue board, as well as all of the cards that the players choose. I can't wait to try this game out in our game centers this fall.
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Our amazing music students have come back from vacation with lots of musical energy, and a desire to learn!
Students in Mrs. DiVece's 5th grade class listen as a fellow classmates composition is played on our smart board. Fourth and fifth grade students have been working very hard in Mrs. Ferris' music class on composing a variety of songs. Students were given an outline on different assignments in the hopes that they write their own pieces, and explore the Noteflight program with a few guidelines.
Noteflight allows students to write music using all different kinds of instruments, while adding notes of all values, the ability to add articulation, lyrics, and so much more. Each student receives their own personal account that they can access on any computer with internet access. This is a unit that fourth and fifth graders do every year. |