2nd Grade Musical THIS WEEK!

Dear 2nd Grade Parents,

The 2nd grade is proud to present our musical, "Spaced Out", which will be held on Thursday, October 24th, at 6:00 PM in the Dolvin Cafeteria. Students are encouraged to arrive at 5:30 PM to begin getting into costume. Please be advised that the school doors will not open until 5:30 PM. Your child will need to war jeans and a white shirt: all other costume necessities will be provided by the music department. If your child has received a character assignment they will need to wear their assigned costume. We will hold a performance for the student body Thursday morning at 8:00 AM; therefore, you will need to send your child to school with their costumes for the morning performance. Please check the music department website for any additional information at www.dolvinmusicendicott.blogspot.com.

We are also in need of parent volunteers to assist with the set-up of the cafeteria following the conclusion of our performance Thursday evening. Please email Megan Endicott if you would be willing to assist.

Please e-mail the music department if you have any questions. We look forward to seeing you Thursday, October 24th, at 6:00 PM for our performance.

Thank you,

Megan Endicott & Patrick Denney
endicott@fultonschools.org

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www.dolvinmusicendicott.blogspot.com.

2nd Grade Musical!

Dear 2^nd Grade Parents,

We are excited to announce that we will be presenting our second grade musical, “Spaced Out”, at Dolvin Elementary School on Thursday, October 24^th.  Your child may be interested in auditioning for a special role in this year’s musical.  Attached are lines and part assignments for students to utilize for practice and during their audition.  Auditions will be held during the window of Oct. 11^th-16^th.  In order for a student to obtain a role, they are expected to speak loudly, slowly, clearly, and expressively.  We do not require students to memorize their lines for their audition; however, memorization offers an opportunity for students to use their hands to add expressive qualities. Every student will have an opportunity to dress in costume and be featured on stage regardless on if they are selected to speak in the microphone. Speaking parts are limited. For more information, check the music blog at http://dolvinmusicendicott.blogspot.com/p/spaced-out.html. You may also find this information on the music website “Spaced Out” tab.  

Thank you,

Megan Endicott and Patrick Denney

~ 3rd Grade information coming soon! 

Welcome 2019-2020 Dolvin Students!

We are thrilled that we are back here at Dolvin and now in our 3rd week of school! AMAZING! All students are working in unit 1: rhythm, beat, and meter. These past few weeks have been about learning routines and procedures and just having fun being together! We have been exploring steady beat verses no steady beat and our preference for each. In addition, we have been moving and playing instruments to the beat to discover that some pieces of music are more difficult to "find" the beat! We look forward to moving into musical notation and meter (or how the beats are grouped) in the upcoming weeks and look forward to sharing more with you as we ramp up our Seesaw accounts! Be looking for information soon!

I know a lot of 4th and 5th graders are getting excited about the beginning of chorus. We will begin accepting chorus paperwork next Tuesday and will begin rehearsals next Thursday, September 5th. Please read the information on the chorus link about chorus dismissal and the strict policy about late pick up. I have an appointment across down on Thursdays at 4:30 and cannot be late. Be brainstorming carpool setups or your back up plan in the event something unforeseen pops up. You may begin signing up today on the website by clicking on the chorus link above! Be aware that the chorus polo purchase link may not be active until next Tuesday. New to Dolvin? Check out my YouTube channel to peek at some of the great things happening at Dolvin ES!

2nd & 3rd graders are beginning work on their musical, Dig It and Spaced Out! Check out the musical tab above for dates and click on the specific tabs to begin looking at the audition scripts, lyrics for practice, and home, and any particular costume needs. We are looking forward to all of the fun!

Finally, I am helping run the tech team again alongside Kaitlyn McMahan (EIP), Jenn Shaffer (AA), and Sue Thomas (Media Center). We currently do not have decisions made on the progress and hope to be posting the final list by next week. We had a lot of interest and a lot of forms to review! Please be patient as we make the best decisions possible.

Have questions? Reach out to endicott@fultonschools.org! And go ahead and follow me on Twitter to see pictures and videos of our students at work! This is going to be a great year!

~Until next time!
Megan Endicott

Welcome Fall!

We have had a great time this week continuing our Unit 1 lessons: Music is a Language.

In kindergarten, we brought the story "The Very Busy Spider" to life by adding rhythms as well as including improvisation on unpitched instruments to add some sound color to our story.  Other students helped build a giant class spider web throughout the story and caught our "pesty" fly at the end.  Students demonstrated their ability to read, sing, and play quarter notes and 8th notes in music.  They also discovered how to tranlate the rhythm of language into musical notation.  We are looking forward to adding the quarter rest this week!





Our first graders continued to study rhythms and added a new symbol; the quarter rest!  We focused on the quarter rest with an exciting song and soccer game to the song, "I Love Soccer"!  They also got to preview form by identifying the sections of the song.  As an added bonus, first grade musicians were able to shake their "rah-rah" on the rests on the A section, while others passed a soccer ball back and forth on the B section.

Second graders are continuing work on our upcoming musical.  We began rehearsals Friday.  I just know that parents will be thrilled with the sound coming from these very talented musicians.  I look forward to what rehearsals bring this week.  Be checking for constant updates as we may include a live stream of our show for parents and family members unable to attend Thursday night's performance.  Glass Productions will also be attending the performance and offering a high quality DVD for purchase at the event.  It is definitely a wonderful keepsake.  In addition to the performance, students have been working on reviewing quarter notes, 8th notes, and quarter rests.  We will be studying a new note, half notes in the upcoming weeks.

Third grade students have dove headfirst (litterally!) into 16th notes with an exciting song and game of "Chicken on the Fencepost".  We divided our students into three groups to focus in on phrase structure and music rhythms.  While "Chicken on the Fencepost" is considered a play party, we chose to pass on the dance this year and add an exciting game.  The game is similiar to a chase or race, but through a maze of students.  Two concentric circles  move during the song, and on the last phrase selected students drop hands and opens up a path for our racers.  Two students race through the windows to be the first to grab the chicken in the middle of the groups.  We also are learning about play parties and 16th notes with song, "Tideo".

 

Fourth grade students have had a blast reviewing more rhythms including 8th notes, quarter notes, half notes, whole notes, dotted half notes, whole rests, half rests, and quarter rests through two part rhythmic accompaniments with song, "Soldier, Soldier". Perhaps the more interesting part is the lyrics!  Oh the drama!  But they have certainly enjoyed the challenge of putting together these rhythmic accompaniments with their new song.  To conclude the activity, we discussed variations, and had students compare and contrast "Lazy John" to "Soldier, Soldier".

Fifth grade students focused on dotted rhythms this week with "Ama Lama" and Quaver's "Hey Mister Beat Boy".  They were able to compare and contrast the differences between the uneven feel of dotted rhythms with the straight even sounds of beamed 8th notes and quarter notes with the "Sore Foot March" by marching around the room demonstrating the two separate feelings.  In addition students were offered the formula for the duration of dotted notes.  They participated in pairing various dotted rhythms through dictation and ended with adding 3 part rhythmic accompaniment to Ama Lama as well as a quick rhythmic dictation activity.  We are looking forward to learning about syncopation next week with Ella Fitzgerald's, "A Tisket, A Tasket" and "Lil' Liza Jane" (Thank you www.bethsmusicnotes.blogspot.com).  We hope this will prepare us for creating a rhythmic accompaniment for our story, "Frank Was a Monster Who Wanted To Dance".

 



Last Week in Music....

We have had some fun developing lessons from last week through this week in class.  Our focus this 9 weeks is Music is a Language: Rhythm, Beat, and Meter.  We hope to end our unit with compositions!




Kindergarten:  This week we performed steady beat, with acting, and singing with the book, "Rumble in the Jungle".  The kindergarteners had a wonderful time making the connection between music and literature.  We discussed how music can enhance literature.  (Lesson from Mallet Madness)







First Grade:  First graders have also been studying steady beat and added acting and singing with the book, "Baby Bear".  We turned the book into a call and response, sol la mi, production.  It also served the purpose of allowing us to preview how well students sing sol la and mi to prepare us for our next unit, melody!






2nd Grade:  Our second grade students are working diligently to prepare for our upcoming second grade musical "Spaced Out".  Students completed auditions for special roles and have begun learning their stage dance movements.  Mark your calendars! The show is October 2nd.  In addition to our musical, students have been learning about music rhythms: quarter note and 8th notes.





3rd Grade:  In third grade, students have taken their knowledge of creating rhythms with "Alexander and the Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day!"  Last week, we reviewed rhythms with 3rd grade students, and discussed how to transfer the rhythm of the words to musical notation.  This week, students created sentence about their day and added the musical notation following the specific rules for meter in 2. (Lesson from Mallet Madness)



4th Grade:  Again, our focus this unit has been on beat, rhythm, and meter.  We have spent several weeks working on meter.  This week we added to our lesson from last week and reviewed rhythms with the silly song "Fooba Wooba John".  (Thank you www.bethsmusicnotes.blogspot.com! The kids LOVE it!) This week students added instrumental texture by playing four parts on unpitched percussion to "Fooba Wooba John".  We concluded the activity by writing new silly lyrics to Fooba Wooba.



5th Grade:  In fifth grade, our students have been playing with meter extensively.  We started by listening to several examples and bounced tennis balls in various patterns (meter of 2: bounce catch; meter of 3: bounce-catch-tap in hand; and meter of 4: bounce-catch-tap-tap).  (Quaver's Marvelous World of Music) We then had students move around the room to music and when the music stopped, students had to quickly and quietly get into groups that matched the meter.  (Wonderful idea from John Feireband) This week, we added peacock feathers to Tanz, by Carl Orff and looked at how mixed meter looks in music as well as feels.  This was a valuable lesson to see how music can change meters, unlike music they hear in their everyday lives.  (A wonderful resource from Darva Campbell).  We concluded our day with rhythm hoop improvisational play and how we can enhance literature by "rapping" and adding instrumental interludes to the story, "Frank Was a Monster Who Wanted to Dance".  ~ Get the book here. (Wonderful ideas from www.bethsmusicnotes.blogspot.com)  Or goal is to add new rhythms each week and create their own instrumental interludes and perform.  See our motivation here!

Marvelous Music Creations...

Music Room Business!  This is a long one... I promise to post at the end of October to cut down some length next time.

A lot has been going on in the music room since we started in August.  All students began the school year learning the ins and outs of steady beat.  Students moved to music with and without a steady beat with the song "All in One", and played the steady beat on various classroom instruments.  They even had fun taking turns leading their classmates in dance moves to a steady beat with the "Steady Beat Montage"; a compilation of a large variety of genres and tempos.  With the help of a new class "friend" Quaver, students connected the steady beat to their heart beat.  Older students were able to turn their own beat into a challenging math quest for free music tickets! 

      The heart beats about 130 times per minute in newborn babies and about 70 times per minute in teenagers.  The heart muscle contracts to push blood to the lungs and the body.  By checking the pulse, the number of heart beats per minute can be determined.  Check your pulse by counting the number of beats in 10 seconds and multiply by 6.  What happens after you do 20 jumping jacks.  Compare your heartbeat to the newborn baby and the teenager.  Where do you fit in?

  

4th - 5th Grade Students:  These students have been working hard to prepare for their recorder unit.  We began by taking what we learned about the steady beat and moved into a discussion on meter.  Students found that most music is grouped in sets of 2, 3, and 4.  Through the bounce catch patterns of tennis balls, rhythm stick passing games, and conducting patterns, students began to feel the different meters and the impact it has on music.  They were able to transfer their knowledge to a new computer program, "Quaver's Marvelous World of Music" and create a backbeat using rhythmic percussion.  The objective was to create at least 2 measures showing that beat one is strongest followed by 3 weak beats.  Students were able to compose any variety of instrumentation as long as there was the obvious downbeat.  They really had fun completing this task!  To continue our studies of meter; students have been preparing for a performance of "Tongo" in class.  "Tongo" is a song in duple meter.  Students were able to sing and perform 3 ostinati under the vocal line!  I could see the surprised looks in their faces and sense of accomplishment when listening to their class perform.    Finally, we have began our study of the staff to prepare for recorders.  The staff has five lines.  Students have learned that the space names are easy to remember (FACE) while the line notes are more difficult (EGBDF).  Through the use of mnemonic devices, students are able to remember the line notes.  (Every Good Boy Does Fine).  We held a brief discussion on mnemonic devices and their uses and how they could be helpful in everyday life. (Spelling test!) Students were challenged this week to create their own mnemonic device for EGBDF and draw an interesting picture related to their sentence.  On the back side they are to use their name OR a friend's name and create either an acronym or acrostic.  They will recieve music tickets for completion!  (See below for a video of Ms. Stansbury's class and Ms. Townsend's class performing "Tongo")

3rd Grade Students:  Third grade students each year participate in a county wide assessment.  These students completed their pretest the second week of school and performed better than I expected.  They really retained information from last year and seemed to be clued into third grade material.  Way to go!  Following the assessment, our focus has been on melodic direction and studying pitch and melody.   Students have had fun moving to melodies that go upward and downward with the parachute to Tchaikovsky's Chinese Dance from the Nutcracker and "I Don't Care if the Rain Comes Down" as well as dancing and playing melodic direction with "Flight of the Bumblebee" and "Rocky Mountain".  To help visualize matching high and low pitches we played a fun ball game where students sang and tossed the ball to match their pitch choice.  I was surprised to see how many tackled the really high pitch just to have the chance to throw a really high toss!  Speaking of high pitches... Did you know an opera singer can break glass by singing a loud and high-pitched note?  Fact.  If a sound wave resonates with a glass at a certain pitch called resonant frequency, a glass can vibrate and smash!  Third graders learned about sound waves, resonant frequencies, and harmonics in a brief discussion with the "Myth Busters" to solve the myth.  Of course you would need to use a particular glass to pull off this type of stunt... 

2nd Grade Students:  Second grade students have begun work on their musical.  We are currently finishing up auditions now.  Please look at the tab labeled "Spaced Out" at the top of this page for lyrics so your child may begin practicing their songs at home.  To kick off our musical, I was pleased to show the students pictures of some of the famous and influencial people in our musical as well as share stories about each individual.  It was a treat to see how each student reacted to seeing what some of these people looked like.  Especially the ones from 190 BC!  Relating to students that there were NO cameras back then is shocking to them.  And their favorite of course was the discussion of Newton and how he created the law of gravity.  Each week I hope to teach students about their musical which will aline with their classroom curriculum.  The students had fun sharing their knowledge of the sun and moon before we confirmed their answers correct as it is stated in their new partner song, "We're As Different As Day and Night".  As most popular music, our musical song selections have a verse refrain form; therefore, our music concept has focused mostly on form. (organizing music into sections).  Students had fun connecting form to music outside the classroom with "September" from Earth, Wind, and Fire.  They had so much fun creating a parachute movement, that some of them told me they bought the song on iTunes!

1st Grade Students:  First grade students focused mostly on steady beat and played the barred instruments (xylphones, glockenspiels, and metallophones) with story, "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" by Eric Carle.  Following their performance of singing and playing "Brown Bear, Brown Bear", students created our own version of the song through the use of finger puppets.  It was fun being able to take the time to allow each child to sing their own sol-mi pattern. The kids really enjoyed it too!  We played steady beat on various unpitched percussion instruments.  Students focused on learning how instruments fit into the percussion family and how the percussion family was by far the largest family.  So with the simple 3 S rule (strike, scrape, shake), students could identify percussion instruments.  But how do we classify instruments within the percussion family?  Students were given a wide variety of instruments they have played before and some that they have never seen before and were asked to classify instruments into 4 hula hoops based on their own observations.  Each student had the opportunity to share why they placed their instrument in the hoop.  I found it interesting to hear why students placed instruments in particular hoops.  Some said, "Because most of the instruments in this hula hoop are metal", while others said "I picked this hula hoop because red is my favorite color"!  With more guidance students categorized instruments into metals, woods, membranes, scrapers/shakers.  We were even able to create a large "hula hoop" Venn Diagram to show those instruments that could fit into more than one group.  Following this activity, students were able to use the hula hoops and conduct each group by simply jumping in and out of the hoops showing rhythm.  They had a blast!

Kindergartners:  Kindergarten students have been really focusing on steady beat.  I find that it is a process that takes time to really feel.  We have played instruments to the steady beat with "Johnny Works with Hammers" and "Two Little Apples" as well as moved to the steady beat with the "Steady Beat Montage" and "One Green Jelly Bean".  We have even taken stories and made them musical to practice singing and playing steady beat with "Rumble in the Jungle" and "Fall is Here".  We have added form to our lessons.  As students in class are learning about fall, scarecrows, and weather, so are we!  We have taken a song "Autumn Leaves" and had students create a beatiful movement to match the words to the song.  I then had students play a steady beat bordun on the barred instruments and a separate group play the finger cymbals on the rhyming words.  We then played with the form and created a rondo form (ABACA).  Students were able to sing and play on the A section, move and play on the B section, and improvise movement and instrumentation on the C section.

Check out one of our Dolvin kindergarten classes as they perform "Autumn Leaves".  I had a kindergarten student volunteer video tape... I'm amazed at how well they know their technology!

4th and 5th graders had fun playing a 3 part ostinati with song Tongo.  I love seeing their facial expressions after they finish a performance.  One student said, "That was awesome!"

Spaced Out!

Dear 2nd Grade Parents,

We are now working on our musical Spaced Out.  Students will be learning the lyrics to their songs and participating in auditions.  Please click on the Spaced Out tab above to find lyrics and script to our show!

Thank you!