Episode #83: New Favorites for 5th and 6th Grade

Music Teacher Coffee Talk · MTCT Episode #83: New Favorites for 5th and 6th Grade

In this episode, Carrie and Tanya discuss their new favorite activities for 5th and 6th grade. We both have had to make many adjustments to our traditional Kodály-inspired curriculum due to COVID restrictions as well as larger focus on SEL, World Music Pedagogy, and social justice in our music rooms. We both have reduced the amount of activities promoting music literacy (traditional Western European literacy) and have chosen to try new ideas and activities in this unusual year. Here are some of our new favorites that we have tried and we felt were successful.

Main Theme: New Favorites for 5th and 6th Grade

Tanya has enjoyed doing more World Music Pedagogy this year, especially a unit on Brazilian music at the start of the year which helped build relationships and set a joyful tone to her music room. She has incorporated ukulele into her 5th grade classes where students do lots of play-along videos with popular music like "Three Little Birds" and "Lime in the Coconut." She is also planning a keyboard unit where students will get to play pop and rock tunes. Recently, Tanya has been incorporating a daily "Musician of the Day" listening moment featuring a Black musician. She uses the first 10 minutes of each class play the listening selection and then uses the sentence stems of what do you hear/notice/wonder to guide discussion.

Carrie has been putting a higher focus on Social-Emotional Learning and building relationships with her 5th and 6th grade students. She started this year with a mini-unit about emotions in music. You can hear more specific ideas in our Episode #73: Building Relationships During Challenging Times. She is also incorporating more music listening at the start of her class. This week she has been playing various performances of the song "We Shall Overcome" in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The students have been singing the song and then watched this video about the history of the song. When incorporating traditional music literacy, Carrie is planning her units by having one curricular focus during each 2-week rotation, and she is planning her daily lessons using the workshop model: short introduction (listening lesson usually), mini-lesson with preparing, presenting, or practicing the new concept, student individual work time on an assignment or project, sharing out if applicable), and closure. So far this year, Carrie has been doing rhythmic work with both 5th and 6th grade students, mostly reviewing past rhythms we have already learned. This rotation, she will be presenting the rhythm combination tam-ti (dotter quarter/8th) to 5th grade and will use "We Shall Overcome" as a reading piece later on. The focus for 6th grade has been on using Soundtrap to practice rhythmic concepts and create music. The 6th graders have done 3 projects so far, each one learning a new aspect of Soundtrap:

• Project #1: Create a project with 3 looping tracks: drums, bass, and piano.
• Project #2: Create a project using original rhythm loops created with Patterns Beatmaker.
• Project #3: Create a project by "notating" known rhythms using Patterns Beatmaker. Here is a copy of this assignment and you are welcome to use this idea with your students! They also created an original rhythmic composition and then learned how to record it into their project using the built in microphone.

This week, Carrie is reviewing the major and minor scales with her 6th graders, and her students' project this week is to create an original melody using all the pitches of the major scale on Song Maker in Chrome Music Lab. Like Tanya, Carrie is looking forward to starting a keyboard unit with her 6th graders later this year and incorporating Soundtrap and the Shared Piano function of Chrome Music Lab into that unit.

Know Better, Do Better

Consider being more thoughtful about the representation of BIPOC musicians when choosing listening lessons and recorded music for your students. For example, this week Carrie wanted to play the song "Peace Like a River" for her primary students, and chose this recording by Lynda Randle. Also, remember that while it's perfectly appropriate to celebrate and highlight Black musicians during Black History Month in February, it's important to highlight Black artists throughout the year.

Work Smarter, Not Harder

Remember that the time you spend on building relationships with your students will pay off in the long run when you know what's going on with your kids ahead of time. Tanya used a Google Form (Seesaw activity for primary students) where she asked the students how they were feeling and if they was anything they wanted to tell her, and this helped later on when one of her students was struggling in class and she already knew what was going on with him and how to best help him in the moment.

Wakelet is a great tool for organization online content, such as making YouTube playlists.

Coda

Carrie recommends the podcast Music Ed Amplified with Missy Strong, particularly her first episode with Karen Howard titled "Confronting Systemic Racism in the Music Room."

Tanya recommends the book This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia.