Newsletters

Music and the Brain Newsletter No. 17 – March 2007

THANKS FOR A GREAT BOOK 2 WORKSHOP!!
We thank all teachers and interns who were able to attend the Book 2 Workshop on February 15th. We had a great time sharing new recordings with you and we got good feedback from you all that it was a productive session. Please remember that the Book Two Manual is a work in progress and we look forward to your ideas to help make it even more helpful than the Manual for Book One. Please send your ideas and comments to Lisha at brainmusic@aol.com.

WELCOME TO OUR NEW SCHOOLS IN 2006-2007!!!
Music and the Brain has is in the midst of an exciting expansion. We now have more than seventy schools using the curriculum across New York City public schools! As always, spread the word about the program to teachers and principals you know who would benefit. Word of mouth has brought us a long way. Here are the newest additions:

Region 9
PS 12M Natalia Talia Hoyer
PS 171M Bryan Powell
PS 57M Robert McDermitt
PS 157X Randi Ryan

Region 10
PS 123M Cheryl Nowakowski
PS 98M Shirley Perkins, Rick Whittington
PS 278M Elana Stiel Obstfeld
IS 143M Gian Tornatore
PS 175M Sharon Robinson, Arthur White
PS 48M Charles Brown
PS 145M Gisela Justicia-Wenger

Region 1
PS 207X Luis Periera

Region 3
PS 160Q Judy Silverman

Region 8
PS 67B Movetta Manning
PS 38B Shirley McDonald

TIME MANAGEMENT
As we enter the tenth year of Music and the Brain, it is increasingly clear that time management is one of the greatest factors contributing to really successful lessons. In MATB lessons, this is a great challenge because each song can lead to so many activities and discussions. It is very important to have a clock facing you at the back wall of your room if possible so you are always easily aware of the remaining time in your lessons. It is most helpful to have an idea how much time you want to spend on each activity on the rug so you don't lose your lesson plan. Here are some time management tricks we've seen in the field:

  • Have recordings you need cued up and ready to go for each class
  • USE ASSIGNED SEATING to help you eliminate the time needed to get the kids in place. If the rug assignments coincide with the keyboard assignments you can really save time. Reinforce this in the beginning months of school so there is no excuse for roaming children in your room.
  • Keep your rhythm cards, CD Player (ideally remote control) up front with you near the rug.
  • Use students as monitors for handing out keyboard cards, theory papers, etc.
  • Restrict bathroom use altogether or only permit it when your rug lesson is over
  • Don't let your students dictate the pace of your lesson. Children can easily derail your lesson plan if you don't control discussions and questions. YOU are the Captain of the ship.
  • NEVER let students enter your room noisily and wildly. You'll spend your classroom time settling them down. Wait at your door until you have them focused. Consider a quick routine, (counting to 10, singing a short song, et al) as a way to set a time limit on them getting to their seats, coats off and ready to go.
  • Consider placing colored tab stickers on the piano books at the beginning of the day on all the song pages your kids will be using so you can quickly get the correct song open in their books

KEEPING RECORDS OF CLASS PROGRESS
Think about keeping a chart (visible to all in your room) of each MATB class and a list of the songs they've completed. It is a great way for you to keep track of different grades and classes (and keep them moving forward in the curriculum) and it's also good for school administration to see the progress. Most importantly, the students love to see their class represented among other classes with all the songs they've learned.

IDEAS FROM THE FIELD

PLAYING WITHOUT LOOKING
Aaron Scott of PS 129 spends time having his students take turns coming up to one keyboard to play 1,2,3,4,5,4,3,2,1 after having practiced the fingering on their knee. The goal is for them to do this WITHOUT looking at their fingers. He reinforces that we have control over our own fingers so we don't have to watch them.

HUMAN RHYTHM CARDS
Andrew Boeckmann at PS 150Q did an exercise with his students to reinforce time signature. He had his class clap a succession of rhythm cards and asked them how many beats were on each card. He then laid out four small squares of carpet and asked the class what they thought it represented. The kids said that each piece represented one beat in a measure (they were very smart!). He took four volunteers and they each stood on one piece of carpet and the class identified that they represented quarter notes and "clapped" their friends. Then Andrew moved it so that two kids shared one square, one was empty and one full and they figured out that the sharing kids were eighth notes and the empty was a quarter rest etc and clapped the rhythms. He then showed that one child with a left foot on one square and a right on another was a half note. Next the children in the class took turns to arrange their friends into different rhythmic patterns for the class to guess by clapping.

NAME THAT CARD
Arthur White of PS 175M has his classes find the rhythm card he's playing on the keyboard. He holds up two similar cards for the class to choose from and plays the rhythm on the piano often with different pitches or chords. It's a nice ear training exercise.

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT TOOLS
Elana Stiel of PS 278M has a nice system in her classroom. She has a jar of buttons that each student gets two buttons at the beginning of their lesson. Based on behavior and participation she gives more buttons during the lesson. The children are trained not to play with the buttons but to hold on to them throughout the period. Though it is rare, students can lose a button for poor behavior. They return the buttons to her at the end of the period and she records how many everyone has. At the end of each month she gives a special prize to the top 3 or 4 students who had the most buttons. She feels the buttons are successful because it's a tangible item they can feel rather than just getting stars or checks in her book.

TAKING A BREATHER
Jennifer Ghedini of PS 139B was teaching Kuma San and had her students sing the song over and over in English and Japanese to learn the words. She took a break from the singing for a bit and did a different activity before coming back to singing. It's a nice idea to do this when teaching new music so the kids have a moment to digest what their trying to memorize and be able to come back to it. It also helps prevent the boredom of lengthy repetition.

ENCOURAGING NOTATION
Michael Tuchman at PS 65X often has his students from Kindergarten on come up during his lessons and write notation on the dry erase board. He instructs them on what he wants them to write either by clapping the rhythm or asking them to come up with their own rhythm in a specified time signature. It's great fun for the kids and they get comfortable writing notation from the youngest ages.

FUN LISTENING
Kari Crabb at PS 122Q encouraged her kids to pretend to be in the orchestra as they listened to recordings of Ode To Joy. Different students took turns conducting while the rest of the class pretended to play various instruments in the orchestra. The student conductors got to stand on a chair while she helped them conduct the orchestra.

REVIEW TIME
Samara Clayton at PS 49X has begun giving her students five minutes of free/review time on the keyboards at the top of each lesson. It's a nice way to give kids a chance to see what they remember of a song they just learned and have some fun before the new lesson for the day. Often songs can become easier to play for the children when they have a short distance of time between playing them.

NEW APPROACH TO TREBLE/BASS/LEFT/RIGHT
Michelle Turner of PS 36X has started a few new approaches with her Kindergarten and first grade classes. In working to get students to distinguish left and right hands, she spent a few weeks emphasizing the right as the "shaking hand" in activities of greeting. Michelle also delayed introducing the terms Treble and Bass clef and instead refers to the "top half" and "lower half" of the staff. She taught her classes to "Raise the Right, and Lower the Left" which she's reinforced with the red right and lemon left note heads placed on the Velcro staff. (Even if the musical terms "treble" and "bass" are introduced immediately, it's useful to think of them as a top and lower half of the grand staff.)

YOUNG CONDUCTORS
At PS 11M, MATB intern Laura Vincent asked for volunteers to come up and conduct her as she played Ode To Joy on her Bassoon. The children practiced conducting in four. One child practiced varying the tempo between slow and fast and saw how as the conductor she could control that.

WOODWIND DEMONSTRATIONS
One of our new interns, Laura Vincents demonstrated her bassoon when she visited Sharon Golub (PS 11). She talked about vibrations making sound, reeds and how the length of an instrument makes the pitch higher or lower. She also talked about characters and stories in music and played granddad's theme from Peter and the Wolf the beginning of the second movement of Scherezade. A lesson on "Morning" followed with the children listening to the recording and contemplating the story of the song.

Several of our MATB interns are woodwind players and all are ready, willing, extremely able and eager to demonstrate their instruments at schools. Heather and Laura are also members of a Woodwind Quintet that has developed a special public school program. You can contact us or them directly for more information.

CUTE KID COMMENTS

> A first grade boy at PS 132B taught by Andrew Anka was having a glorious time at the keyboard. At the end of the period he said to Lisala, "It's over already???? (then whispered) At the end of the year, they let you play with the buttons on the keyboard. I know because a second grader told me!"

> At PS 160Q, when asked how the class could be sure which hand they should use to play "Swimming Down and Up" a dear little girl raised her hand tentatively to say "Well... I think it's the left hand because I see a picture of the sun and you said the left hand was by the window and the sun is outside by the window".

MATB CONTACTS
LISHA PAPERT LERCARI, DIRECTOR
330 WEST 42ND ST. 17TH FLOOR, NY, NY 10036
PH: 212-695-4242 FAX: 212-695-4275 EMAIL: brainmusic@aol.com
LISALA BEATTY, CO-ORDINATOR
PH: 917-612-4575 EMAIL: lab527@yahoo.com