31 Days of Rhythm: Engage Students with Rhythm Sudoku

Can you believe that we are more than halfway through the month of March already? Spring is finally here and we are in the middle of celebrating Music in Our Schools Month! There is so much to be happy about! 

For today's post, I'm going to share a brilliant idea that I learned about several years ago at a workshop: Rhythm Sudoku. 

If you are anything like me, you probably first heard about Sudoku about eight years ago. Maybe you never really got into it because "math isn't your thing" (which is ironic because a Sudoku puzzle actually doesn't require any arithmetic.) Or maybe you have experience completing the puzzles and are wondering how on earth these number squares can relate to rhythm. 

Either way, I'm happy to show you! In this post, I'll walk you through the steps required to make your own Rhythm Sudoku puzzle (or for those of you more results-oriented, you can buy ready made ones in my store. But that really does take all of the fun out of it, don't you think?)

A traditional Sudoku grid is 9x9, but we don't need to get quite so involved with ours! Let's make a 4x4 grid to start out. Once your puzzle is complete, you can think of it like a composition with four measures of four beats each.

This will be the most time-consuming portion, but once you get the hang of creating them, you should be able to create a puzzle in a minute or two. 

You have to select four different rhythms to use in your puzzle. Start plugging them in the grid wherever they fit. You can't have the same rhythm twice in any row or column. 

Make sure you make note of what your completed puzzle looks like. Then, you can erase most of the rhythms so that your puzzle is ready! The more squares you erase, the more difficult your puzzle will be. For beginner level puzzles, I like to make it so that at least one row or column can be solved immediately.

Once you have created your puzzle, you are ready to share with your students. I like to create several puzzles of increasing difficulty levels to challenge my students as they are ready. Once they have solved the whole puzzle, they have a grid of music notation, which can be used for reading practice.

You can read them the "right way," as in read each beat from left to right. Or, for more crazy fun, you can read the lines backwards. Or you can read the columns going up or down. There are so many different combinations and ways to interact with the completed puzzle grid! It's a surefire way to keep kids curious and engaged while reciting rhythm syllables!

31 Days of Rhythm: Prepare Quarter Notes and Eighth Notes using In the Hall of the Mountain King

This has to be one of my favorite pieces of music to use in my teaching. I love to use classical pieces that my students immediately recognize. They are so much more engaged when they've heard the piece in their lives already.

In this piece, there are just so many great musical concepts just waiting to be unpacked: tempo, dynamics, orchestral instruments, storytelling, pitch, and of course, rhythm. The clear rhythmic motive in this piece is so catchy and accessible for even my youngest students.

For our MIOSM blog series, I am sharing how I use this piece to prepare my young students for quarter note and barred eighth notes. Here are a few different tried-and-true ways to use it:

1. One of my favorite ways to introduce the piece is to play a recording of it while dramatically telling them the story of Peer Gynt’s attempt to flee from the trolls. I think that storytelling is one of the most overlooked aspects of our craft. It is arguably the oldest form of human expression, and I love being able to get my students' attention and help them hone their aural skills by telling them stories.

(If your school and administration is super open-minded, perhaps you could also play them this terrifying video? Just kidding. Don’t show this video unless you want angry parents calling you demanding to know why you showed their child this demonic video in music class.)  

Anyway, while I tell them the story, I begin chanting “tiptoe, tiptoe, tiptoe, troll” to the rhythm while our hero tries to escape. When the tempo and dynamics increase, I change it to “run run, run run, run run, troll!” It doesn’t take long before all of my students are chanting it along with me. Most are also singing along to the melody.

2. In a previous blog post, Listening Lessons Three Ways, I shared an awesome tool that was given to me by a former teacher: she calls it her "Marauders Map". It is actually two long paper rolls (they are a few feet wide and look great up on a chalkboard or dry erase board.) I start with the iconic notation and then when I'm ready to actually present quarter and eighth notes, I'll put the other one up side-by-side to compare.

3. In case you don't want to make your own map, here is a free printable/projectable one that I created using iconic notation:

4. Another fun activity to do with “Mountain King” is compare it to Mary Had A Little Lamb. I challenge my students to see if they can sing the lyrics to “Mary Had A Little Lamb" to the melody of "Mountain King." The same can also be done using "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" and it's fun to try and do the movements faster and faster with the accelerando in the piece.

5. One of the things that makes "In the Hall of the Mountain King" so accessible for students is the fact that it is so pervasive in popular culture. It's been covered and re-recorded by a number of popular artists and it is frequently heard in TV and movies. I've been told it is sampled in the song "Hair Up" from the new Trolls movie (how appropriate given the subject matter.)

No matter the source, there is a good chance that your students will recognize the tune when they hear it in class, and that is a great way to get them engaged in the lesson! 

And the Zazzle winners are...

Congratulations to the three winners of my Zazzle Pin-to-Win contest! If you were a winner, check your email for the next step to claim your prize!

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Thanks for participating!

Music on Wheels: The School is Your Classroom

As a teacher on a cart, it can be hard to do all of the folk dances, play parties, and movement activities that are crucial components of a music curriculum. I recently guest posted on the TpT Music Crew Blog about some fun, new ways to incorporate movement into the music room. But how can we manage to do all that when we don't have a nice open music classroom? I think the solution to this problem requires a slight change of perspective: instead of thinking that you don't have a classroom, think of the entire school as your classroom!

The School is Your Classroom

I am in the middle of preparing sixteenth notes with my third graders and we've been gradually learning more and more moves to the song "Old Brass Wagon." Today I wanted to teach them "promenade," which for this song would involve them crossing hands with a partner and then walking in a big circle.

I walked into their classroom and saw the teacher had rearranged all of their desks into rows for an upcoming math assessment. I sighed and momentarily considered ditching my plans to do that dance and considered teaching something else instead. However, after collecting my thoughts and thinking about how important it is that they get this movement experience, I got to work. The kids and their teacher were at lunch, so it was just me in the room. I moved all 20-something desks over to one side of the classroom so that we would have enough space. Was it a pain in the rear? Yes. Do I regret it? Not at all. 

Promenade, Vickers-Willis.com

Of course, with more advanced notice I could have recruited some student volunteers to move the desks over and help me adapt the space to suit my needs. However, I made a decision to do the dance today no matter what. 

It can be so easy to get discouraged when teaching on a cart situation because it feels like you have nowhere to go. Instead, I've learned to change my perspective and realize that I can go wherever I think will best meet my students' needs! When we are dancing in a longways set, we go make our two rows in the hallway! When we need to make a big circle, we do it wherever we will fit. A few Halloweens ago, I had a class of fifth graders learning the Thriller Dance in the middle of the library because it was the best space available at the time. 

Today, when one of the third graders walked into the room and saw that I had moved all of their desks to the side, she looked at me suspiciously. "Mrs. Tanenblatt," she asked, "did you get permission from our teacher to move the desks?" All I said to her was, "I'm a teacher at this school, too. I don't need permission." 

Of course, I have developed a good enough rapport with most of my colleagues at this school that I know I don't need to ask permission for that kind of thing. It's safe for me to just go ahead and do it and "beg forgiveness" later if I messed up where desks or chairs were supposed to go. I strongly recommend making sure you've had conversations with your colleagues about your intentions if you're going to start teaching in random places and rearranging furniture. I've found that a simple "heads up" email is usually more than enough to make it clear that you have a job to do and will need to make some adjustments to the space in order to do it.

What's the most "creative" place in the school you have taught? 

Introducing Mrs. Tanenblatt on Zazzle!

Hello, everyone! In my last post, I hinted that I would have a fun announcement on my blog soon. So here it is: I opened a store on Zazzle! 

If you're unfamiliar with Zazzle, it's a huge online market place where I'm excited to be selling some products for music educators!

        

       

To celebrate the launch of my new store, I'm hosting a giveaway of one of my new products: music teacher bumper stickers!

I have THREE separate bumper stickers to give away, so I'll be selecting three winners from the people who enter using the rafflecopter form at the bottom of this page. To enter, you will need a Pinterest account (plus bonus points you can earn from other social media profiles.)

For details about how to enter the giveaway and a little backstory on my store, please check out the following video:

I hope you like the options I have available in my store. If you have another idea that you don't see listed on there, please let me know and I'll try to design something to suit your needs as a music educator! You can email me, rdtanenblatt(at)gmail.com, and I'd be happy to talk to you more about your ideas.

In the meantime, please enter my giveaway to win a Music Teacher bumper sticker! 

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Introducing the TpT Music Crew

Have you heard the news? There is a new collective of Music Sellers on Teachers Pay Teachers! We call ourselves the TpT Music Crew, and we are working together to collaboratively bring you the best resources for your classroom. If you hop on over to our site right now, you'll see that we're about to hit the road and travel to three music teaching state conferences this winter. If you live in the Southern US, you might want to go see if we are going to be coming to a convention center near you!

And if you're not in the South, you can still subscribe to our newsletter and follow our social media to get helpful teaching tips and great promotions. And did I mention that we also have a blog? If you check out the most recent blog post right now, you might see someone you recognize! (Spoiler alert: it's me.) 

I hope you're as excited about this new venture as I am! But don't worry: Music With Mrs. Tanenblatt isn't going anywhere! You can still read my blog for some of my very favorite teaching ideas and reflections. In fact, stay tuned for a fun announcement and giveaway some time in the next week or so...

Until then, have a great week!

Why I Teach Music

I am so happy to be posting about such an important subject this week. This is something that has actually been on my mind a lot this school year and I’m excited to be able to share my personal experiences along with some fabulous other bloggers. I’ve chosen to share some photos from my personal Instagram account to illustrate this post. Make sure to read all the way through to the end to find out the details about the giveaway!

Freude, schöner Götterfunken Tochter aus Elysium! wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!

A photo posted by rachel t on Oct 31, 2016 at 2:48pm PDT

I am currently in my fifth year of teaching, which means I am still a relatively new teacher. In college, they told us that most of us would not last longer than five years teaching in the public schools. As I approach that deadline, I can understand why some people would feel that way.

Teaching music is a hard and often thankless job. Many of us balance our regular teaching responsibilities with the added stress of preparing concert programs and special events in the school. We spend our planning time working individually with students and going to meetings to learn how to better meet their needs. We teach hundreds of children every week and have to figure out how to share the joy of music with them. Hopefully we do so in a way that will motivate them to continue listening to, performing and creating music for the rest of their lives.

"But what is it that makes us keep coming back? For me, it is the same reason I started in the first place: I love making music!"

However, despite all of the stressful and challenging factors I just mentioned, we keep going. We return to the trenches day after day. But what is it that makes us keep coming back? For me, it is the same reason I started in the first place: I love making music! To me there is no greater joy than learning a new piece and performing it in front of an audience.

When I first moved to the Baltimore area and started teaching, my school responsibilities overwhelmed my life. As a brand new teacher, I spent every spare minute after work and on weekends planning lessons and searching for the best ways to reach my students. Now that I have at least a few years under my belt, I feel more confident in my daily teaching responsibilities. I am able to spend my time outside of school taking care of myself and doing something that I truly love.

I have started a new professional venture this year that has reminded me why I wanted to be a music teacher... I joined the Baltimore Choral Arts Society!

You'd think that after making music all day, I wouldn't want to go after work and do it all evening. Yet somehow, this is the highlight of my week!

A photo posted by rachel t on Oct 17, 2016 at 6:10pm PDT

It’s by far the best decision I’ve made to improve my personal outlook and improve my teaching. I am going to rehearsals every week and performing regularly with ensembles like the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. I am learning new, challenging repertoire as well as singing choral standards like Orff’s Carmina Burana and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Every rehearsal and performance is a reminder of why I do what I do: because music is a powerful emotional and communicative force.

The more time I spend perfecting my craft outside of school, the more confident I feel in teaching music to my students. I feel renewed and refreshed. I love being able to tell my students about my rehearsals and performances because it shows them that teachers are lifelong learners. I also love being able to invite my friends and family to come hear my concerts and share my artistic endeavors with them.

The view that never gets old

A photo posted by rachel t on Oct 30, 2016 at 10:59am PDT

Singing with Choral Arts has also motivated me to do some self-care by staying conscious of how I use my voice during the school day. Since I am singing semi-professionally I need to take good care of my instrument and practice good vocal hygiene. I am paying much more attention to how I conserve my speaking and singing voice and I use amplification while teaching. Most importantly, I am trying my best to stay properly hydrated! This is so important for people who use their voice constantly.

For me, singing with Choral Arts has been exactly the reminder I needed of why I teach music. I’d love to hear about why you, my dear readers, are in the music education field! Share your story on social media with this hashtag:


#whyiteachmusic 


Don't forget to include this link back to my blog so that others can enter, too!

http://bit.ly/whyiteachmusic

If you comment on my post here or share it on social media, you will be entered into a giveaway to win the following prize:

• A water bottle to help you make sure you stay hydrated while you’re teaching
• Some Mozart chocolates because every teacher needs a little pick-me-up. 

Good luck!


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Spooky Books and MORE for Halloween

Hello all and happy October! I'm shocked to say that this is my first blog post of the 2016-17 school year. It's been a crazy busy year for me because this is my first year teaching chorus at one of my schools. Much to get organized and many things to be learned (by the students and me!) I'm also very busy after school and on weekends now because I have recently started singing with the Baltimore Choral Arts Society. It's been a whirlwind of rehearsals and performances, but the thrill of making music at such a high level with some amazing musicians makes it all worthwhile.

 

All that being said, I couldn't let October slip by without sharing some of the fun new Halloween things I've been doing in my class this month! If you want to read about some of last year's Fall-O-Ween inspired lessons, check out this post. 

 

I'll start off with some great books that have gotten me through this Halloween season. (Please note that some of these are affiliate links to Amazon and I receive a small commission on purchases made through them.)

 

 

 

 

Last year one of the books I mentioned was The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. (The lesson on this one practically writes itself... each of the spooky objects can be assigned to a different instrument or body percussion for endless creative variations!) Check out my post from last year to see more.

 

My next new book, The Haunted Mansion, was something that I stumbled upon while on vacation with my family in Walt Disney World this summer. For those of you who don't know, I used to work for WDW as a part of the Disney College Program, so I go back and visit as often as I can! My niece, who is five years old, loved The Haunted Mansion attraction and I found this gem in the gift shop. It includes beautiful illustrations of each phrase of the song, along with a CD of the original ride soundtrack sung by Earl Ravenscroft (who, incidentally, is stuff of film/TV legend... voice of Tony the Tiger, singer of "You're a Mean One, Mister Grinch." Look him up!) I used this book to discuss high sounds and low sounds with Kindergarten. We talked about Ravenscroft's unique voice and compared it to some other voices we hear.

 

Last month when the Scholastic book fair rolled through town, I came across this Pete the Cat version of the Five Little Pumpkins. I've often used this song as a fingerplay with PreK, Kindergarten, and first grade. I was so excited to add the book to my lesson this year.

 

My last new addition this year is Saint-Saëns's Danse Macabre. I often play a recording of this piece and have younger students dance or move with scarves and imagine the storyline. With older kids I will have them complete a listening guide while the music is playing. Now I'm excited to be able to read this book, which is based on the true story of how the composer came to write the piece of music. Did you know that Danse Macabre originally had lyrics? What a great way to discover more about the history of a piece! I'm planning to read this to second grade and up later this week.

 

 ... Check back later this week when I'll be sharing a few more of my favorite spooky activities!

 

 

July Small Goals

"July, July, July, it never seemed so strange..."

 

I can't believe we're in the month of July already! It feels like summer just started and already I'm making plans for the new school year. I'm once again linking up with The Yellow Brick Road Blog to share my small goals for the month.

• Get my Donors Choose project funded
  Thanks to this great blog post by Elizabeth Caldwell, I was inspired to try and get keyboards for my elementary students. This week, Donors Choose is matching any donation up to $100 as long as you enter the code LIFTOFF when you donate. So, do any of my readers have a rich uncle who wants to donate to my music program? ;)

• Finish my online course
  I'm taking a reading course that's required for my certification this summer. The course is supposed to go until the second week of August, but I'm trying to finish it off a little bit early so that I can...

• Prepare for my trip to Disney World!!!
  For those of you who don't know me personally, I am a HUGE Disney person. In fact, when I was in college I spent a semester working in Walt Disney World as part of the WDW College Program.
  
  I was an attractions cast member, which means that I worked on one of the rides. 10 points to anyone who can tell what attraction I worked on...
  
  
  
  Working in Disney World was such an amazing experience... if you know anyone college-aged who is looking to spend a semester doing something a little different, I would highly recommend he or she apply for the program.
  
  My oldest sister did the college program about ten years before I did and went on to work full time for the parks for the several years. So you could say that Disney is sort of in our blood. We're going on a family trip in a few weeks and taking my two nieces. To say that I'm excited would be an understatement!!!

Thanks for reading my July small goals. If you want to share yours, head on over to The Yellow Brick Road and link up.

End of School Random Song Generator

Well, we made it! Summer vacation is upon us here in Maryland! For those of you who still have a week or more remaining, don't despair: now is the time for fun review activities. Time to celebrate all of the great learning that has taken place in your classroom over the course of this past school year.

I wanted to share a review activity that was very successful in my music room for the past two weeks: the random song generator!

I used the Smart technology random name generator and plugged in the names of the most popular songs, games, and listening activities for each grade level.

In class, I had a student (this can be a good behavior incentive for unruly classes during the last week) come up and press the "select" button. It will then randomly pick a song for you to sing.

I did this with PreK up through 2nd grade and I'm so happy with how it turned out! I'm happy to share this SmartNotebook file with you; to put in your own songs, simply double-click each song title.

Download here!

June Small Goals

Happy June everyone! I can't believe it's that time of year already. It feels like this school year has flown by! In my county, we have just 10 more precious days with students before summer vacation... when did that happen???

I'm linking up with Jennifer from The Yellow Brick Road to share some small goals for the month of June....

1. Finish off the school year with a bang!
   I can't wait to implement my end-of-year review centers next week and enjoy seeing all the progress my students have made this year!
2. Plan, plan, plan this summer
   As teachers, we are so busy during the school year that when summer vacation finally rolls around, I often feel like I need to maximize my time so that I can see all my friends, tackle home improvement projects, and get all of my other school work done. For this summer I bought a new Creative Year planner from Michaels so that I can write down all my plans and really make things happen.
3. Hop in the pool :)
   We're opening the pool tomorrow afternoon, so naturally, this is a big priority for me!

I hope your school years are wrapping up smoothly and that you have some good things in store for the month of June, as well!

Happy Teacher Appreciation Day 2016!

To all of my fellow teachers out there "in the trenches" as we finish up our school year: Happy Teacher Appreciation Day! We are in the home stretch now. Here in Maryland, we go until mid-June, so I haven't quite made it to the end-of-year-review stage yet, but I'm already starting to plan what activities I will be doing to help my students celebrate their learning.

Keep reading to get the link to download a new free end-of-year review activity that you can use with your students!

I love doing review centers during the final weeks. I usually set up one center for each of the major units we've studied during the school year: rhythm, melody, harmony, form, and timbre. If you follow my Teachers Pay Teachers store, then you already know that I love games that use clothespins. In a recent trip to the grocery store, I happened to find a pack of 24 multicolored plastic clothespins and I just knew that I had to create a game to put them to good use.

I created Instrument Families Clothespin Clip so that students can sort the families of the orchestra according to the colors of the clothespins. If you don't have multicolored clothespins already, you can use a marker to color regular wooden clothespins. Or if you'd like to purchase a set, this set on Amazon is similar to the one I found in my local grocery store. (Please be advised that this is an Amazon affiliate link and I will receive a small commission from purchases made through this link.)

Just like any other clothespin activity, the most important thing to remember when assembling it is that you want your paper to be on a sturdy backing. I'd recommend printing on a thicker paper like cardstock. If you don't have that available, you can do what I did and glue the game card onto a piece of cardboard. I just took the side off a cardboard box and trimmed it down to size. 

Once I bring it to school tomorrow morning, I will also run it through the laminator to help ensure that it lasts a long time. I'm looking forward to adding this resource to my arsenal of activities for the end of the school year and I hope you enjoy using it, as well!

Putting the A in STEAM through Composition

This past week I had the privilege of attending our school's STEM night for the first time. This is an annual event for our students and families. Classroom teachers present information to parents about math strategies and websites they can use at home. Our STEM teachers present about technology and creative problem-solving skills that they use in their classroom.

Arts and music teachers rarely ever attend this particular event, so I'm proud that the STEM teachers asked me if they could include the fun new game Compose Yourself that I've been using with my classes. I gladly volunteered to attend and man the station!

I first learned about this game when someone posted about it in the Music Teachers facebook group. I've been using it in different ways with different students. For younger kids, I've been using it as a whole group activity on the SmartBoard. With my older kids, I have them figure out how to play the patterns on xylophones and/or take them to the computer lab to create their compositions online. 

In order to play this online composition game, you need to purchase the cards ahead of time. I purchased mine from Amazon and have included a link if you would like to get it for yourself! (Note: this is an Amazon affiliate link and I receive a commission from purchases made through this link.)

 It comes with a deck of 60 cards, each with one measure of melody, that can be flipped upside down or turned over to create endless melodic combinations. Once you pick your cards, you can input them into the Compose Yourself website and hear your melody played back (with optional harmonization by a full orchestra) and then you can further edit it until it sounds the way you want it to.

At STEM night, I set up a table with some chromebooks and had my copy of the game cards ready to go. It was so great to see the kids' faces light up as they heard what their composition sounded like after it was played back. And it was also great for their parents and teachers to see how we integrate technology into music class!