My favorite and most fun bow game/exercise - Pennies!

Bow games are a big part of my daily routine in beginning orchestra and I have students do bow games every day for many months.  That means that I need to keep bow games interesting so that students don't get bored with doing them.

At the start of the year, students are in a new school as 7th graders and they tend to be extra quiet and a little reserved.  I want them to bond in my class and start making friends in orchestra as soon as possible.  This is one bow game that really helps students have fun together and start opening up.  It may be a little roudy for some teachers out there, but I absolutely love it and my students beg to play it over and over.  It's great for making your orchestra class FUN!

First, I give every student a penny and I have them balance it on their bent thumb.  The whole point of this exercise is for students to focus on their thumb as they hold the bow and help them remember that the thumb must stay bent.  I have students do all of the regular bow exercises with the penny on their thumb...stir the mush, circle face, arm wave (you can read about all of those on my previous post about bow games).  Students try to do all of the exercises without dropping the penny and they start getting just a tad competitive to see who can keep the penny on their thumb the longest.

When we get to the elevator bow exercise (holding the bow horizonally and moving it up and down), students put the penny on top of their hand.  This is so important for the students to know...that they must keep fingers bent while hold the bow so that the hand is flat!

Now to my favorite part.  We play a game called Sabotage.  When the weather is good, we go outside and spread out.  Each student balances the penny and they all run about with their bow and penny and try to knock the penny off of other people's thumbs.  The rules are that students may not use their left hand and they must maintain a proper bow hold the entire time.  When the penny falls off, they are out and must stand on the side to watch.  We play until there is one person left and then the students all beg to do it again.  If it's too crazy, you could make another rule...no running.  Students really bond during this game and it gets the class lively and fun.  So far, I have never had a bow break or anything.

I have also used Sabotage as a small classroom game.  It works in Minute to Win It as 4 to 6 students compete against each other for one minute.

Orchestra is Awesome

My kids keep singing the 'Everything is Awesome' song from the Lego movie and it is totally getting stuck in my head.  I decided to change the words a bit, just for variety.  :)  So now, I'm singing in my head, "Orchestra is Awesome!"

Teaching Sight-Reading

One of my goals for my students is to teach them the skills needed to accurately read and perform printed music at their level of ability.  Students can learn so much more music if they have high notereading fluency and are able to sight-read.  I also teach music by rote, but I recognize that students need good ears and good music literacy skills.  

Many students try to tackle sightreading all at once and they can get frustrated if the music seems hard.  I am teaching my students to first look at the rhythm and practice only the rhythm.  After that, students practice the notated pitches with the rhythms.  The next step is to add the bowing and after that, reading the music as printed.  I believe students will experience more success if sight-reading is broken down into these smaller steps.  

This is an example of a sight-reading exercise that follows this process:

You can download this assessment for violin, viola, cello and bass HERE:

Apps I use in my Orchestra Classroom

I thought I should do another post about apps I that like to use in my orchestra class.  Students love technology and I love to incorporate the ipad in my classroom.  Ipad's work great for game days.  When I did our Orchestra Olympics game day, I divided students into small groups and had them rotate around to different 'events' every 5 minutes.  I used an iPad for 2 different events - one was the Note Squish Game.

NOTE SQUISH







This app works great for the orchestra classroom because you can customize the note range and it has all clefs.  Students enjoyed competing to see who could get the highest score.

I used the app TE TUNER for another game for the Olympics, but also I use this app in class now and then during rehearsals

TE TUNER







For the game, I had students take turns slowly playing a scale with the tuner app turned on.  Every time a students plays exactly in tune, the app will create a green smiley face.  Students got 1 point for every smiley face they earned while playing the scale.  The app creates a  great visual to help hear and adjust intonation.  Students really liked watching results of their intonation as they played.  I used this app frequently in rehearsals to help students understand that there is only one F# (as an example)...they must all match each other and not just stick to their tape as tapes are not absolute.  The only problem with this app is that is takes up a LOT of space on your hard drive.

AnyTune is another app that I like to play around with.  It will take any music you have in your iPad music library and allow you to make adjustments....change keys, make it faster or slower.  One day I might use this as a rehearsal tool if I am rehearsing music that is not on SmartMusic using the mp3 file from JWPepper.  I have used this app while writing arrangements for my class so I could slow music down while I transcribe.

ANYTUNE







ScoreCloud is an app I just learned about.  It is pretty amazing...all you have to do is sing a tune or play a song, and the app with notate what it hears in standard notation.  I am not sure how I will use this in my class yet, but I may come in handy on a unit about music composition.

SCORECLOUD






Explain Everything is an app that I use quite frequently.  I do not have a document camera in my classroom, so I use this app by uploading my worksheets or files for my class and I project those things for all to see in front of the room.  The app allows me to explain assignments by drawing right on them on my iPad.  I have also created several presentations using Explain Everything.  I use it to teach key signatures, rhythms, bow distribution, practice strategy, note reading, and I use it for bellwork assignments.

EXPLAIN EVERYTHING








I just found this Sightreading Machine app a few weeks ago and I am planning on using it in my orchestra class for warm-ups now and then.  This app generates short sight-reading excepts based on specific parameters that you can set.  I like that I can select only notes and rhythms that my students would know.  I am hoping students will enjoy this activity enough to download this app themselves and practice with it at home.  It is not very expensive and I feel students would really increase their note-reading and sightreading skills by practicing with this app.

SR MACHINE

Rehearsal Procedure

I have never had an official rehearsal procedure for my students.  I tell them what I expect, but have never put it in writing or posted it on the wall.  This is something I am adding to my bulliton board in my classroom this year.

Brand new Rhythm Basics Resource/Workbook Download!

The Rhythm Basics Workbook shows how you can introduce and teach basic rhythm to your  music students.  In the book, I compare the beat to oranges on an assembly line.  Students have done well with this analogy in my class and I like to bring a few real oranges to my class and I cut the oranges into pieces to show students how the beat can be divided when we get to eighth notes or sixteenth notes.  I use a sharpie to write the beats on the orange... 1   +  ...then I cut the orange and show the 2 halves of the beat.

This workbook includes work pages for students and also some group learning activities with a total of 13 pages including the cover.  Students learn about the difference between beat and rhythm, quarter notes, half notes, whole notes and corresponding rests and also eighth notes.  Students also learn basics about measures and time signatures.  You can download a copy of this book and make as many copies as needed for your students at my store: HERE.

You may also be interested my my note-reading book.  You can read more about that resource HERE.

Don't forget to purchase your download of Be An Amazing Note Reader for Orchestra

Purchase this resource at my store!  www.orchestraclassroom.com

Summer is almost over for teachers and you want to make sure you have your materials for the beginning of the year.  This book works great for the start of your beginning orchestra class.  Find more information about this resource HERE.

FREE Fingering Chart printable worksheet for orchestra

Here's another free printable for you!  You can use this worksheet for so many different things.  I use this for teaching notes on the different strings, teaching whole and half steps, finding all notes for different key signatures, and even fingering for other positions.  The gray circles and lines are to show where the basic fingering position is in relation to the other circles.  If you use fingering tapes on instruments, the gray lines show where the tapes are...and this works for every instrument.

Click HERE for your free download!

Rules for the orchestra classroom

This year I decided to re-write my classroom rules.  I looked on pinterest and found an idea I liked where a teacher used the letters from the word RESPECT to make the rules.  I used the same idea, but changed the rules to apply to orchestra.  The last few years, I only had 3 simple rules.  That was working for me alright, but I think broad rules can be a  little too open for interpretation and I recently read a book where the author recommended more specific rules.  This is what I can up with and you can purchase a download HERE.

Must have FREE PRINTABLE for your school string orchestra!

I have students coming into my beginning orchestra class with different skills levels.  Some students are brand new beginners and some students have had about 1/2 year of training already.  One way I like to keep every student engaged at the start of the year is to use music with an easy part for the true beginners and a harder part to challenge the more advanced players.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is a tune that works great for this.  Beginners play the basic melody or a harmony part that I teach them.  The more advanced beginners play a version that I call "Twinkle Extreme."  It all sounds great together and students love it!

Here is the harmony part for Twinkle in the key of D:

D    D    F#   F#       G    G     F#---

E    E     D    D         A (on g string)   A    D----

F#   F#    E    E      D    D   A-----

F#    F#    E    E     D    D   A-----

D    D    F#   F#       G    G     F#---

E    E     D    D         A (on g string)   A    D----

Find a FREE download of Twinkle Extreme HERE!

Orchestra classroom: Introducing......My theme for the 2014-15 school year

Every year in orchestra, I like to have a theme to help me design t-shirts and also to help motivate my students to be their best.  Last year, I used the musical tree (see poster) on my t-shirts and I frequently talked to my students about the effort required to nurture their talents in order for them to improve and grow.  We even had an orchestra plant in our classroom that I watered when enough students practiced so students could watch our plant thrive with our diligence.

This year, I decided to use this as my slogan:  Orchestra Gives You Wings

I like to design my t-shirts on www.CustomInk.com.   It is probably cheaper to use a local shop, but I like the design feature on customink.com and they have been great to work with.  Plus, it's nice to not have to create everything from scratch in Adobe Photoshop.  CustomInk has a lot of clip art available when designing a shirt, so I was able to piece all of this together using their graphics.  Here's what I came up with:

Here's what I'm most excited about:  My plan is to have students earn their own wings to pin on their shirts.  I found little plastic aviator-type wings that I can customize for music.  Students will earn their wings after earning a pre-determined percentage on all of their playing tests.  This is manageable for every student because I allow students to re-take playing tests as many time as they need.  I am also going to try a new policy where I require students to re-take a playing test if they don't reach a certain score.

The most successful practicing motivation for students

I have mentioned in previous posts that I am constantly trying to motivate my students to practice because I do not like to force students to fill out practice sheets.  I do many things to motivate students, including having a 'video-of-the-week' every Monday right when class starts.  I always have a positive message or moral to share about the video and they usually focus on developing skills the students need at the time.

My most successful big event I have done for practicing is having students earn music money for each minute they spend practicing.  (I did a 10 minute minimum to earn the money because I didn't want to mess with one dollar bills)  I was able to immediately hear a difference in my orchestra when I started this event and my students are already requesting that we do it again!

Here is where I downloaded the temple for my money:

http://www.ticoandtina.com/free-printable-play-money/

I then used Publisher to make my money look a little more musical:

This was then printed on green paper and I had my TA cut them all out.  (It was a lot, but she had time.)

 I gave students 3 weeks to earn their practice money.  As students came to class each day, they picked up the correct amount of money depending on their practice.  They wrote their names on the back and put them in a special manilla envelope.

At the end of the 3 weeks, I had my TA sort all of the money into piles and paper clip together the money that was turned in by each student.  I then held an orchestra auction and allowed students to bid on items and spend their money.  We did this right after our last concert and it made for a great celebration.  I auctioned off things like candy, dollar store items, bumper stickers, pencils, certificate for extra credit, certificate for a free pass on one playing test.......