Newsletters

Music and the Brain Newsletter No. 4 – October 2001

Dear Music and the Brain Teachers

A few of us have the benefit of visiting many Music and the Brain classrooms to observe how different schools and teachers deal with the same material in different ways. We use this newsletter to pass along successful ideas from our observations of classrooms as well as suggestions of how to make things work better.

Topics for Discussion

During this first month of school, several things have come to our attention throughyou and our observers. Many of these things may or may not apply to you, but your feedback on all topics would be very valuable.

In some situations, teachers are spending much of their class-time disciplining children and waiting for quiet. Establishing an atmosphere of respect in the classroom is certainly important in the beginning of the year, but a compromise must be found. It's rare for a whole class to be misbehaving. Usually the majority of the class waits while the few children that are being disruptive are dealt with. Children only become more restless the longer we keep them sitting still waiting for others to be quiet. Valuable time is wasted and teachers expend much of their energy in disciplining rather than teaching. One way to keep children engaged and therefore quiet is to vary activities every 5 to 7 minutes. Prepare 4 or 5 different short activities that convey the concepts you wish to convey in different ways. If children are becoming restless, change activities. Use movement in your lessons. Create games. Use all the materials provided. Sing, clap rhythm, analyze the music, dance, improvise, have children create their own songs, listen to recordings, discuss the lives of composers, practice ear-training skills. Do it all.

The songs in all the books are rich in musical concepts though they may be very simple to play. Spend time analyzing them with your classes. Don't pass over them too quickly to get on to the playing. The most valuable thing the children cangain from this material is a solid understanding of basic musical concepts and a love for music. This curriculum uses the keyboard as a basis for understanding and creating music, but the main focus is not making the children pianists.

Some of you who have more children than keyboards in your classrooms have tried dividing classes in half for keyboard time. Splitting classes has been asuccessful way of dealing with large classes in small spaces. The only dilemma is how to have two separate activities going on in a small space without creating distractions for either one. Having one group of children do music worksheets quietly on the rug while the other children are working at the keyboards has been very successful. They can also listen quietly to a CD when the lesson calls for it. The trick is to provide progressively more challenging material for each class so those children who finish quickly have enough to do.  Please send us your ideas for quiet rug activities.

Several of you have asked for new red and yellow finger number stickers: you can get red and yellow label stickers at 'Staples', or use a marker on white labels to create the same effect. The specific stickers are not important. Just be sure to put the labels on the keyboards before you write the numbers so they matchup with the keys.

Stories from the Field

PS 11 During a lesson on opera for the duet "La ci darem la mano". One class talked about the story of Don Giovanni. (Don Juan) There is a children's book about him called "Don Giovanni at the Masquerade Dinner". They talked about opera being musical drama, a story you sing that can have instruments, costumes, scenery and can be in different languages. When asked what might be at the Masquerade dinner, one child said, "Chicken!"

PS 46 Ear-training seems successful: Solfege call and response with hand symbols seems to be improving the children's ability to understand pitch relationships.  The teacher even quizzes her classes by playing a note and asking what solfege syllable it is.  Most of the time the children are correct.

PS 207 One intern noticed how children new to piano approach understanding the music from all different angles. Many by numbers, some by ear and one or two by musical notation. If we use all channels to understanding we can think of,hopefully we can reach every child. One or two is not enough.

PS 36x Michelle's personal space game: This was part of a lesson on respecting other's personal space. Lay out a selection of bass and treble clef cards on the floor. Play any music and have the children walk around the room without entering each other's block of personal space. The concept of trains was used,so if two people were in danger of colliding, one train would have to back upand take a different track. When the music stops, the children must put the correct hand on the clef card closest to them. If children violate the personal space rule or use the wrong hand, they are out of the game for one round. The children did a great job and loved the game.

PS 150 First graders reviewing note durations had only been discussing quarter note, half note and whole note. They were showing how many beats each note gets by holding up the correct number of fingers. Suddenly an eighth note appeared on a card. The teacher paused to think, "how can I represent an eighth note by holding up fingers?" Before the teacher could explain. one child slowly raised a half bent finger. He was quicker than the teacher! What a great idea!