2020 Concert

Welcome back 4/5/6!

As promised, we have started working on the songs that the students selected and voted on. On Thursday we had a listen and sing through them, and started thinking about the ideas for turning our song into a performance item.

Year 4/5/6 also got back into working on technique and the concept of playing as an ensemble. They understand that this means, amongst other things, keeping your part while others are playing a different part. To help students work on this, we are revisiting Axel F on marimba and adding other instruments. We had a modelling session in class this week, with a small sample group on marimba, bass and keyboard playing three different parts, to show how it works. I'm looking forward to extending this further in the next couple of weeks, with students swapping around to different instruments!

For reference, the three songs we are working on are: I'm Still Standing (46G); Cheap Thrills (46K) and We Will Rock You (46L). I will be putting out extension materials for any students who are interested in working on their song at home: note for any musician families - I have changed the key for each song to make it easier to play and to suit the children's voices. Please don't practise the song at home in the original key! :)

Finally: there is a song we are using (Don Pepito)for warmups in 4/5/6 Music, that will become a mini-project for Music and Spanish. I put this activity on Seesaw as one of our last remote learning tasks, and the students will be required to learn (as best they can) the body percussion AND the Spanish lyrics. Anyone interested in working on this at home, follow the link here:

https://youtu.be/tHojOp9IpVY

F/1 Music

We are continuing our exploration of the classic orchestral work Carnival of the Animals. This week the children listened again to Elephants and to a new movement, Fossils. This led to an interesting discussion about bones, shells, museums and dinosaurs: who knew that 5- and 6-year-olds were so well-informed about dinosaurs?!? I am so pleased to see the children remembering so much about the instruments of the orchestra in such a short space of time. We are going to use the Carnival as a springboard for lots of Spanish content about instruments, animals, and ways of playing (e.g. loud and soft).

2/3 Music

Our return to the classroom has meant lots of opportunities for movement and hands-on activities. 2/3 classes learnt an echo activity on marimba using the notes C-G, and will use this as a model to create their own compositions over the next couple of weeks. This week we returned to recorder - what an improvement in children's playing I can see! They are also very adept at the song (with actions) Long Legged Sailor. Well done families for working so well on this during remote learning!

Endunda

I wanted to start with a completely new song as a way of welcoming back the junior (F-3) classes, so we learned Endunda. The children learned this through echo body percussion, then singing back certain sections of the song, then even analysing the direction of the melody using their hands. I found this song amongst the many, many great works by the Argentinean music educator Luis Pescetti. Luis is a highly skilled and entertaining musician, poet and teacher, and I recommend his work to those who are interested (Spanish only, sorry!). The song is played in this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtXVSM7hODI