Isle of Friday Afternoons

Isle of Tune is one of the best ways to let your students create music on their own at school or at home.  Simply put down a road, a few cars, street lights, houses, trees, plants, and voilà: they have created a song!  I encourage all of you to experiment with Isle of Tune for a while.  Before you know it, half of your day has disappeared creating music!  This site is so intuitive and easy for students pick up, that I have had many emails from teachers and parents sharing with me how much they love this site! Not only can you create songs, but you can also use Isle of Tune as a fun teaching tool.

Boom!

Behold! The Wall of Whackers!

Boomwhackers are great for the elementary music classroom, but they are such a pain to store.  For the past six years I have kept my large Boomwhackers in laundry baskets and my smaller ones in buckets.  It looked messy and was hard to find the tubes I needed.  I just moved to a new classroom with a very long, empty wall.  I knew I wanted to use the large space for a word wall (which as you can see is still on the to-do list,) but then I found this....

@IWBMusic

IWB Music now has its own twitter feed!  Simply press the button "Follow @IWBMusic" below, and you're all set! Remember, you can also follow IWB Music on Facebook and Google+.

Tweets by @IWBMusic

Kansas City Symphony Kinderkonzert

Photo credit: kcsymphony.org

I have the wonderful opportunity to take a grade level of my students to see Peter and the Wolf and Other Symphonic Tales performed by the Kansas City Symphony at Helzberg Hall in the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts next week.  Peter and the Wolf was one of my favorite pieces growing up, and I am incredibly excited to share it with another generation of young musicians!  The Electric Media Manager for the symphony is a good friend of mine and she shared a series of videos the symphony is using to promote the concert and to educate young musicians about the piece.  These videos feature an introduction by Assistant Conductor, Aram Demirjian and an explanation of each character's traits by local actor and narrator, Alex Espy.  The first video is an introduction to Peter:

Check out the KC Symphony's YouTube channel for more videos each day this week!

New World Symphony

Last week I rehearsed Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 "From the New World" with the Lee's Symphony Symphony Orchestra in preparation for their fall classic.  Although I love performing, this rehearsal reminded me of why I'm an educator and not fighting tooth and nail for coveted symphony gigs around the world.  I had never played "The New World Symphony" before, and it was quite obvious within a few measures of sight reading that I wasn't as familiar with the piece as I had originally thought.  I knew I had homework to do, and I knew exactly where to go:  Carnegie Hall's listening adventures!

Carnegie Hall's listening adventure for Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 provides a detailed, animated listening map for the entire New World Symphony.  I love how the melody of most of the themes is either shown on a musical staff or shown with contour lines.  These are the three themes from the first movement:

The interactive maps provide a great tool for teaching form, contour, motifs, and instruments of the orchestra.  It also provides a great cross curricular opportunity for teaching history, geography, and storytelling.  I don't recommend going through the entire symphony in one lesson or even through one unit unless you are teaching older students.  I do recommend using one movement at a time to help supplement your and objectives.

Carnegie Hall has provided a "How to use this site" page to help you design a lesson that works best for you.  They also have an Activities page for each movement of the symphony.  These activities can be a great way to assess your students and to check for understanding.

You can believe that when I perform this piece at the Lee's Summit Symphony's Fall Classic on October 13 (yes, that's a shameless plug,) I will be imagining the sailing ships, dancers, and locomotives.

If you liked this online tool, you will love Carnegie Hall's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.  You can check out my blog posts about the YPGO here:

• Part One: Introduction and Four Families
• Part Two: Woodwind Pond

Back to School

Summer break is over, and I'm already three days into the new school year!  I decided to take the summer off from blogging as well, but I'm back and ready to share more interactive activities for the music classroom.

My goal with IWBMusic this year is to post shorter entries more often.  I might share a new site or resource, or I might share an old favorite that I'm using in the classroom at the time.  The second goal I have for this blog is to write longer, more detailed reviews and lessons every few months.  I had originally set a goal to write a long entry each month, but that wasn't working well for me.  I think this new goal will get me writing and posting more often.

Click Here for GWEMusic

To get things started this year, I invite you to check out my classroom links page.  It is a collection of interactive music sites I have found over the years.  Because the web address my school district uses is very long, I always walk through how to find the site with my students.  Next, I always review how to use this links page with my students because there are literally hundreds of links on here.

I created a "categories" section at the top of the page to help with navigation.  It's not the best in the world, but it helps.  I also put a small screenshot with each link to help visual learners find the sites quickly.  I have found and used other thorough collections of music websites, but I find that even if the links are alphabetical, I have a hard time finding the links that I like when they are completely text-based.  I have found that a small picture helps immensely.

I hope that you find my collection useful.  I also hope that you have a great start to the new school year.  I look forward to sharing more often this year.  Please remember to check out the IWBMusic Facebook page and Google+ page, and please leave comments and share the resources!

Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra - Part Two: Woodwind Pond

Carnegie Hall's listening adventure, "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra," takes you and your students on a fun safari through the African wilderness in a hunt for all of the instruments played in the orchestra. This is the second part of my five-part resource for this excellent website. If you missed the previous post, you can click here for the Four Families Introduction resources.