A Very "SPECIALS" Night

Last night Thompson Elementary hosted it's first Open House for Specials (Music, Art, PE). Providing exposure for our curriculums, parent education, community involvement, and interactive learning all came together in a fabulous carnival style event.

Each department (Music, Art, PE)  designed 4 interactive stations that summarize large concepts for students to lead their families through and serve as the expert. After all, parents and even homeroom teachers aren't the people who are in our classes learning these skills. Why not give the student the spotlight and let them teach others! It was such a joy to see students taking such pride in being the expert on these skills and showing younger siblings and parents how to do the same things they do.

To guide them through these stations, each student was given a ticket card to be signed off after station completion. Given a goal of 2 music, 2 art, and 2 PE students eagerly found favorite stations and took on challenges. If the ticket card was filled out completely, they were entered in a prize raffle for items such as baseball & bat set, soccer balls, art supply buckets, family 4-pack tickets to Dallas Opera and Plano Symphony Orchestra, and more!

Here's a few highlights or jump to the bottom for the digital scrapbook!

Folding Origami Cats 

Mystery Melodies - play the notes and try to identify the well-known tune. 

Spot Shot - pick a spot and make a basket :)

Saxophones are tricky! Does it belong to the brass family or the woodwind?

If you're interested in designing a similar style event, I'd be happy to share any information in how this was planned! 

Click here for the Digital Scrapbook!

Research Project

Each year, 5th grade students do a large research project on different composers and musicians who made significant impacts in the course of music history. They work in partners to complete a guided research question list and then spend a few days composing an essay and preparing a presentation to share their new knowledge with their classmates. Each pair of students receive a cover page to start their project and share 3 reasons as to why their musician is on the research list. 

Musicians range from the "big wigs" of Mozart, Beethoven and Vivaldi to more contemporary artists such as Gershwin and Stravinsky and even popular musicians such as Carlos Santana, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Bob Dylan and more!

Students will conduct their research through approved texts and websites, video interviews with the musician (if available), and school/public library databases. They are allowed to bring their own technology devices of smart phone or tablet to supplement available resources. Once they complete their research, they will design a presentation to share with the class. This presentation can be as creative as they want to make it: poster, PowerPoint, Prezi, youtube video, iMovie, etc. As long as the visual aid is informative and is well put together, the sky is the limit!

5th grade has been receiving their packets and assignments this week and will jump into formal research on Thursday. Let's get going!

Let's Move!

This past week, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade students got their wiggles out with creative movement exercises. Due to our unexpected snow and ice days, students didn't always get recess and this makes movement day even better! (Sorry for the lack of pictures, but its hard to capture energetic bodies without a blur.)

1st grade students met Joseph Haydn and studied his Surprise Symphony. This was a great opportunity for us to review quarter and eighth note patterns as well as discuss dynamics of piano and forte. As students listened and identified the surprise, we brainstormed movements to help demonstrate forte and piano with our bodies. For piano movements, they came up with tiptoe, sneak, and creep. For forte, we used march, stomp, and jump. It was so much fun splitting up into dynamic groups and moving through space as we listened critically. Thanks to Cori Bloom over at Rhythm & Bloom  for coming up with such great listening and movement lessons!

2nd grade students kept with the winter listening and movement theme by getting to know Claude Debussy's The Snow is Dancing from the Children's Corner collection. It was so exciting to be able to teach this lesson on days when we actually had snow (which doesn't happen in Dallas!). Lessons are always better when we can pull in different subjects to create an integrated lesson and this was a perfect one to brainstorm action verbs to describe how the snow actually moves. We used some included movement words such as gliding, dropping, twirling and brainstormed to add waving, melting, and swaying. Watching the students dance through the space like little snowflakes was such a beautiful experience. As an ex-dancer, it is truly breathtaking to watch the unbridled creativity of a child's mind as they move. Again, thanks to Cori Bloom for creating this one too!

3rd grade students explored a folk dance to go with their sixteenth note study with the song Paw Paw Patch. This is such a fun song and lends itself to a great folk dance. I'm pretty sure my student's favorite move is "Peel the Banana" and not just for its silly name! Check out how much fun they're having below.

"Make a Bridge"

"Around and Thru!"