Making May Musical

Today I am joining up with the Totally "Tuned-In" Teacher for a Making May Musical link party in celebration of the TPT Teachers Appreciation Sale on May 5-6.  My store, along with most others, will be offering a 20% discount and TPT will add an additional discount when you enter a code (which we will find out soon) during checkout.

For the link-up, we each are sharing one item in our own store that we are excited about, one product from another music store and one set of clipart that we are excited to purchase.

I'll get started with a product that I am excited to purchase.  I recently added Tracy King's Recorder Workstations my wish list.

Tracy always has wonderful products, but I have not been a big fan of teaching recorder and especially letting students loose for individual work.  This year has been different in that we have been using the Quaver recorder materials and my students are actually playing beautifully!  Using Quaver has significantly cut back on all of those nasty intentional squeaks and my students have been engaged for far longer into the year than previously.  I am ready to do some final individual assessing and would love to have something productive for other students to be working on while I work with a small group. Recorder Workstations will be a perfect way to finish up our recorder year.  I love the idea of using graphics showing the recorder fingering as a way to compose music.  I can't wait to try it out!

I am excited about purchasing this clip art bundle for a couple of reasons.  First, the bundle contains a full 13 different sets of clip art and the bundle price makes it a great deal.  The variety of sets include frames and borders, detectives, best friends, kids with signs, animals, insects, stars & doodles.  Whether you are creating newsletters, programs, or worksheets for your own classroom or products for sale on TPT, these images will be useful to you.  The second reason that I am excited to purchase this particular bundle is that the proceeds all go toward the expenses of a teacher in need.  Diana Salmon, recently named "Teacher of the Year" for her school, was in an accident which resulted in the loss of her leg.  Read more of Diana's Story here.  While this clip art bundle may seem expensive at first, when I realized the purpose, I am happy to contribute this small amount to help Diana reach her goals!

As the year winds down, teachers and students alike will be looking towards summer.  I am excited to  have a way to bring summer into my classroom musically with this set of easy tonic and dominant tonal patterns in D Major.  At first glance, Summer Fun Tonal Pattern Hunt is a set of flash cards.  

It is indeed THREE sets of flash cards, one large set for displaying on an interactive white board, one half-sheet set for easier printing, and one composite page containing all eight patterns.  Why tonic and dominant patterns?  These are the two major chord functions in major tonality.  Many folk songs that we commonly use in our elementary classes contain only these two chords.  It is great for students to recognize these aurally and visually!

What to do with all of these pattern flash cards?  Herein lies the flexibility in this set.  Here are some suggestions for use.

1. Begin by practicing the patterns with your students.  Play them on a melody instrument and allow students to echo.  Sing them with neutral syllables or solfeggi and allow students to echo.
2. Sing the patterns on solfeggi and students answer with the function of the pattern: "Tonic" or "Dominant".  In this set, tonic patterns are various arrangements of do, mi, and sol and dominant patterns contain 3-pitch combinations of sol, ti, re, and fa.
3. Display the composite page on an IWB.  Sing or play a patterns and students identify the notation.
4. Print the half-sheet patterns and scatter them around the beach (classroom floor or walls).  Play or sing a pattern and students must find the matching card.  This game can be played with individual searcher, or multiple students searching at the same time.
5. Teacher or leader call out "Tonic" or "Dominant" and students must find a tonic or dominant pattern and bring it to the designated area.  This can be individual or team play.  Bonus points if the student can sing the pattern back to the teacher!
6. Print out the composite page (use grayscale printing for low ink version) and copy for students.    One assessment option would be to ask students to label each pattern as tonic or dominant.  Another option would be to sing or play the patterns and students would number the patterns in the order that they hear them.  For example, the teacher would say, "Pattern 1 sounds like this..."  Students would listen to the pattern, find it on their paper and label it "1".  

I am really hoping for some beach time this summer, but in the mean time I will be Making May Musical!

Sally