Yankee Doodle

Hello, everyone!!

Last week, our fifth graders were learning about the thirteen colonies in early America.

I first posed the question: "What are the thirteen colonies?" And I got interesting answers... "Los Angeles?" "Florida??"

We finally worked through all of them, after lots of hints and prods. Ultimately, the list went:

1.   Massachusetts
2.   New Hampshire
3.   Rhode Island
4.   New York
5.   Connecticut
6.   Pennsylvania
7.   New Jersey
8.   Delaware
9.   Maryland
10. Virginia
11. North Carolina
12. South Carolina
13. Georgia

Next, I asked them to listen to the tune I would hum. They all immediately recognized it as, "Yankee Doodle."

We discussed the history of the old song, where we learned that the word "Yankee" referred to the colonists, "Doodle" was colloquial for foolish, and "macaroni" was a kind of wig.

What does this song have to do with the list of colonies we made?

We put the words on the board to the tune of Yankee Doodle!

After just a couple of run-throughs, the kids could sing it with their eyes closed.

To get this down-pat, I had one more activity in mind for them.

This is a music map. A music map is like a normal map--it shows you where to go.














I showed them my map, and then I had them make their own.

The idea was that this could be a visual for their study tool. It was very successful, and turned out to be another wonderful lesson! 

Until next time,

Bianca

You Ain't Nothin' but a Hound Dog

Hey, everybody!

Yesterday, I got to help the students in Mrs. Naylor’s class understand the concept of comparing and contrasting. As we know, comparing is when you take two characters, books, songs, etc.  and figure out which things are the same in both things. Contrasting, on the other hand, is taking those subjects and finding the differences in between them.

In order to get this idea across, I had them compare and contrast Elvis Presley, and Big Mama Thornton in their renditions of “You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hound Dog.”

First, I read to them a biography about Elvis called “Elvis: the Story of the Rock ‘N’ Roll King.” Some of the students didn't know who Elvis was, and a lot of them didn't know any of his background. We learned tons of cool facts about him!




We then got to watch the King of Rock 'N' Roll's classic version of "You Ain't Nothin' but a Hound Dog."

Watching Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show singing "Hound Dog"
Watch his video by clicking here.

 While we watched, we came up with adjectives to describe the way he sang, the way he moved, and the set around him.


Some of the ways they described this video were: "His dance moves are twitchy." "People are clapping in the background." "He sings the same phrase over and over again."










Next, I enlightened them about Willie May Thornton, who was known as "Big Mama Thornton." Big Mama was actually the woman who wrote Hound Dog several years earlier. We watched her video of it, and wrote down our observations on that, too.

Watching Big Mama Thornton's video of "Hound Dog"
Watch her video by clicking here.

She was described as having a, "big, loud voice," a "changing voice" (which I told them was her improvising, or making it up as she went), and "groovy." Indeed, this version was much, much different than Elvis Presley's version.














After watching both of these videos, we made a chart to combine what we knew about both of these versions of "Hound Dog" to compare and to contrast them.

We came up with so many differences and commonalities between the two. At one point, the class was torn about which singer was more "groovy." We fixed this problem by coming up with synonyms where each would describe each singer more perfectly than "groovy."

THEN, we had some REAL fun!

A lot of kids noticed a bunch of instruments in the room as they came back in from recess. Some asked, "what are a bunch of violins doing here??" And, I said, "my friends, these are ukulele's."

Each student picked up a ukulele, and I began teaching them the chords for Elvis's "Hound Dog."


I showed them three chords: C, F, and G7. And then we jammed.










Here is that video:

So much fun was had this week! Thanks for reading.

--Bianca Newkirk

jambo!

Jambo!

Last Thursday with these kids was so fun again! We began our time together with a get-to-know-you activity. It was a little challenging in these ways: It had a different language no one was familiar with, and there were hand movements. The song was called, "Jambo!" which means, "Hello!" It goes like this:

Jambo, jambo, jambo karibu (Hello, hello, hello, welcome)
Jambo, jambo, join in the game.

Jambo, jambo, jambo atoto (Hello, hello, hello, children)
Jambo, jambo, tell us your name.

Then, four students on each of the four beats of rest would say their names, and then we continue with the song again, and we continue in that pattern. It was a little tricky, and it took quite a few tries to get the hang of it, but we got it!

For the next activity we did, if I had to choose one challenging aspect of this lesson, it would have been: What are a few pop songs that ALL fifth graders know?!

In this class, they are practicing how to read fluently. My idea was that, by showing them songs they were familiar with hearing, they could catch on quickly to what they were reading, which were those lyrics. The four songs distributed were: "Let It Go" (From Frozen), "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" (From The Wizard of Oz),  "Can't Stop the Feelin'" (By Justin Timberlake, however most of the kids identified it as "The song from Trolls!"), and "Don't Stop Believin'". Each student found the rest of the kids with the same song they were given, and together in groups, they read through the lyrics very fluently. (If one child did not know the song they were given, I put them in a group with a song they did know.)

After they read through their lyrics, I gave them their next assignment--In brackets, a section of the lyrics (a verse) were singled out. I asked them to letter each line, which we called a musical phrase. The next part of that was for the groups to re-order that verse. I showed them an example with "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."

The group that was the most into this activity had to be the "Don't Stop Believin'" group--they had their air guitars going, and their mimicking voices of the lead singer of Journey. They performed their "arrangement" of the song--I wish I got a video of it! It was brilliant. The new arrangement ended up being:

Hold on to that feeling!
Don't stop believin',
Don't stop!
Street lights, pe-o-ppplllEEE!!!!

The point of this activity was for the kids to read the new arrangement on the board, and their cue being the fact that these words were familiar to them, they still had to read to make sure they knew what they had to sing. It was an exciting activity!


This is continuing to be such a great experience! Thanks for reading :)

Bianca Newkirk

Weevily Wheat

Hello everybody,

I had my first teaching opportunity with Mrs. Naylor's students last Thursday. Can I just say--this group is SO! FUN! Each student was actively engaged, participating, and musically inclined! I asked, "how many of you play an instrument?" And almost every hand went up. All of them were so excited to tell what instrument they were learning, or wanting to learn.

Our first activity we did was singing a song called, "Weevily Wheat." If your child wasn't too familiar with the 5 times tables before that song, now they should be! They picked up the tune pretty fast, and through their knowledge of math, they figured out the lyrics pretty easily. The song goes:

Don't want your weevily wheat.
Don't want your barley.
Take some flour in half an hour,
and bake a cake for Charlie.

Five times five is twenty-five,
Five times six is thirty.
Five times seven is thirty-five,
Five times eight is forty.

And that's it! But we made it way more fun: We added instruments such as the maraca, the cow bell, and some boom whackers. See if your child remembers what a boom whacker does! If they have trouble remembering, try hinting to them that the boom whackers all have different sizes, so what function does that serve?

After we added these instruments to make the song more musical, I had them create in groups the third verse, following the pattern in the five times tables verse. They all accomplished this with flying colors. Of course, each group came to the consensus that the third verse, if the song had one, would go like this:

Five times nine is forty-five,
Five times ten is fifty.
Five times eleven is fifty-five,
Five times twelve is sixty.

In our next and last activity of the day, we played a game much like the one that's called "Down by the Banks," where everyone sits in a circle, hand in hand. The outcome of the game is to file the group down one by one, until there is only one person left.

But in this version, with a different song called "Son Macaron," instead of the people getting out of the game having nothing to do but watch, they get to choose an instrument from a bin and play along! In the song there are different sounds, such as "tip tip tip," and "tap tap tap." The ones with instruments get to decide which instruments would match that sound best. This is a game we just started learning, though, so we aren't quite at that point. We will finish learning it next week.

I hope your students are loving this just as much as I am! This school year is starting off great!

Talk to you all soon,

Bianca Newkirk

Hi, everyone!

Thank you for visiting my blog. My name is Bianca, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to incorporate music into your children's curriculum. I believe that music can help as a learning technique, and impress concepts on people that words cannot get to alone. My goal this year is to help Mrs. Naylor's class use music as a study tool for the core subjects. I will be keeping this blog as a way for you, the parent, to understand what I am doing each time I am with the students. 

This first blog post is simply a way for you to get to know me better. 

I am from Northern Virginia, right by Washington, D.C. My family and I looove to explore there. Second to music, I love learning about history, and American History is one of my favorite branches of that topic.

I am a music education major at Brigham Young University. My emphasis is in choir--so my primary instrument is voice--but I also play the violin, the piano, and the ukulele. I have known that I wanted to teach music since I was in high school--in fact, I did teach in high school. Over the course of twelfth grade, I taught and directed a middle school orchestra in the song, "Jericho" in a national festival, and their final concert. Below is a video of our last performance. 

This is a picture of me and my husband, Tyler. We just got married a little less than a month ago. 

I grew up learning Spanish through an immersion program in my elementary school, and continued to take classes up to the past year I had in college. If you prefer to speak Spanish, please do not hesitate to do so with me if you have questions for me concerning what I am doing in the classroom. (Si prefieres, puedes hablar español conmigo.)

Once again, thank you for letting me teach music to your children! I hope through this blog that you will see how music can make a difference in the classroom!

Sincerely,
Bianca Newkirk