Here is a new book list just in time for the new school year!
Iza Trapani is one of my favorite authors, but when I decided to create a book list for her, I'll admit that I was unaware of just how prolific an author and illustrator she is! Open Library has 39 titles listed for her!
Because of her amazing repertoire and because I've highlighted both Twinkle Twinkle Little Star AND Froggie Went A-Courtin, in previous YUMMY Award posts, I decided to limit my book list to books she has created that are based on songs. I like the way she says it on the cover of her books..... "as told and illustrated by Iza Trapani."
Please notice that in early 2012 Iza Trapani released a new book "The Bear Went Over the Mountain". It is the only one that I don't have, so I'm very curious to hear from anyone who has this book already.....
Click on the picture to get your copy of the list.
I have never been happy with how my word wall has functioned in my room. .I've sort of borrowed and shoved together lots of ideas and ended up with a word wall that was nothing more than a "space taker"..... I don't know about you, but I don't have enough wall space in my room to tolerate any space takers...... soooooo I'm revisiting word walls and trying to synthesis everything that I put on my wall so that everything is accessible, instructional and totally music.
I found some basic letters that I was going to use as the basis for my word wall, but I decided they weren't quite big enough so I have been looking for letters for some time...... After looking and looking and looking and looking I finally decided to create my own..... I used an OLD version of Publisher and an OLD version of Powerpoint to edit graphics as needed. I'm happy with my final product, although it's not perfect and I may continue to tweak it before I finally print it, I thought that I would go ahead and share what I have. ALL of the sources for the fonts and graphics that I used to create my alphabet are included at the end of this post. I did purchase a couple of the graphics when they were REALLY good, but I've found that purchasing the rights to use really good graphics for teaching are often worth it and the fees are minimal. I made my letters to fit on regular 8.5x11 card stock. I decided to create them in black and white and then color them so that I can make them fit my decor at any given time..... Right now, my decor is rather colorful.
I started collecting the "right" graphics...... as it turns out.... gathering good clip art for an instrument that corresponds with every letter of the alphabet is a little daunting.
For photographic clip art that I use ALL THE TIME in my classroom and on my blog I typically use
At this time of year, many music teachers are starting to look at the school year with equal mixtures of excitement and resignation.
Yes - Summer is almost over
Yes - The school year will start.... ready or not
Yes - We will be expected to provide performances for our students to demonstrate their musical skill.
Yes - We always need new ideas!
My proposed performance schedule - (I was recently asked by my admin. what performances I hoped to accomplish... these are the performances I submitted to be worked into the calender at this point I cannot know if anything has been subtracted OR if anything new will be added.... anything is possible.)
5th grade SHOW! - Mon & Tues before Thanksgiving - this is the "big" production of the year and the only one for which I create a backdrop and costumes..... Since this program occurs before Thanksgiving, I do not do a holiday show....
All School Sing Along - early dismissal day in December - I LOVE this one! We all get to sing together.... it's the only time during the entire school year when the entire campus is together at once.
Go Texas Day - late February - joint program with PE in celebration of Go Texas Day! Each grade level prepares their own Texas songs
2nd grade choral informance - March or April depending on the testing schedule - 1st chance for students to practice good singing and good riser etiquette. This is a singing concert.... no speaking parts, no costumes... just singing.... - the kids LOVE it!
4th grade instrumental informance - March or April depending on the testing schedule - students present whatever work they have done on whatever instruments they have used.... Sometimes this informance is predominantly recorder.... sometimes we incorporate boomwhackers or Orff, whatever the students are working on at the time.
4th and 5th grade Choir - May - my choir meets in the spring semester. We present a concert immediately before we perform at our district elementary choir festival.
Volunteer Appreciation - May - Whatever class is with me during the Volunteer appreciation lunch visits the luncheon and sings - for the last two years, this has been 2nd grade and we have simply sung a couple of songs from our concert.
Kinder graduation - late May - I prepare kindergarten to sing a few songs for their graduation
5th grade graduation - late May - I prepare a song for 5th grade to sing for their graduation
This has not always been my performance schedule. With different schools, and co-teachers and administrations I have conducted student performances for each grade level.
Here are some of my favorites!
Best of the Best!
Nutcracker
By Ruth Artman
I did this program with 3rd graders for 5 years. We were able to compile costumes enough for an entire grade level and it was a wonderful and exhausting tradition. I especially like this one because it is based on a major work.
The American Dream John Jacobson & Roger Emerson
The American Dream is MY FAVORITE program of all time.... This show starts in pre-colonial America and goes through the Civil War. I had a year of almost literal "show insanity" as I personally sewed 80 of the 110 costumes..... Even if you decide not to go costume crazy, the music of this show is compelling and exciting to sing! It's simply beautiful! Now that I've been at my current school for a little while, I'm hoping to do this show again in a year or two..... we'll see! GREAT for 5th grade because it contains practically their entire unit of study for Social Studies.
We Haz Jazz
John Jacobson & Kirby Shaw
Just wonderful! - LOTS of factual information with just enough fun. ALL of the costumes for this musical were purchased from a 2nd hand shop! I like to accompany this show with a powerpoint because the jazz musicians are mentioned so quickly that a picture helps. It might be nice to have students where the name of the musician they are portraying around their neck. (Just a thought)
Song and Dance Man: George M. Cohan
By J. Gallina & M. Gallina
This is a wonderful combination of biographical information and patriotic music. You don't need very many costumes but it's easy to make it more elaborate if necessary. If you choose to do this one, this is the perfect time of year to purchase your patriotic items on sale since it's after the 4th!
Cheesy Fun!
BUGZ
John Jacobson & John Higgins
This is an oldie but a goodie.... My co-teacher and I chose this one because of the line "I'm a maggot". We were at TMEA previewing music and that statement made us laugh so hard we practically cried. We did the musical with 4th and 5th graders rather than young children and it still worked very well. This one is pure cheesy fun!
How Does Your Garden Grow?
John Jacobson & John Higgins
This is a great show because you can augment your vegetable and fruit costumes with bug costumes! I did this show with the little ones.
E-I-E-I OOPS!
John Jacobson & John Higgins
Your collection of farm animals can be augmented with bugs and vegetables. I did this show with 3rd grade.
Music Express Musicals!
I find that I have less instructional time than I used to, so every moment is prime real estate! In order for me to be able to produce musicals, I have had to scale back some on their scope. I like these musicals because they lend themselves to the further study of musicians and their music. These musicals are all somewhat similar and therefore the costumes are entirely transferable. Plus, I find that there are similar selections in our textbook adoption, so if I find that I have an extra class or need another song to highlight something, it is a simple matter to augment these musicals as needed.
On the Radio
John Jacobson & John Higgins
I love that this musical has the Andrews Sisters! - This musical is VERY VERY Singable!
Rock and Roll Forever
John Jacobson & John Higgins
I almost didn't choose this musical because it has the Beatles song "I want to hold your hand" Little did I know that "I want to hold your hand " was written for the 5th grade mind! That song was their favorite!
Destination America
John Jacobson & Roger Emerson
This musical comes with great articles for students to read! This is a great musical, but rather than using "real" music, each song is composed to sound like a particular genre of music. Very creative, but in my opinion it lacks some of the appeal. I was pleasantly surprised at how much my students enjoyed it!
This is my choice for this year's 5th grade show
Broadway Beat John Higgins, Cristi Cary Miller, Tom Anderson & John Jacobson
Just listening to the preview makes me excited about next year!
As I was writing this post, I realized just how much John Jacobson has dominated my classroom. I don't know if that is good or not, but I admit that I really like his musicals. So in celebration of the fact that John Jacobson has become and almost omnipresent element in music education, here is the youtube video that catapulted him beyond the music teacher conference circuit and into the youtube hall of fame!
I am a music teacher who loves books. I love finding different ways that I can incorporate children's books into my lessons. As a result, not only do I have an extensive collection of books, but my collection of books is always growing.
I've had my books semi organized for years, but in order to maintain this loose organization, I'd usually pull all of my books out and resort them at least twice a year.... otherwise I couldn't ever find anything. I have also tried to organize my books by type and have actually managed to put stickers on them before, but because the spines of the books are so narrow, my stickers just fell off. When a job isn't done so that the work will last for at least a little while then it really isn't done correctly and causes more work for me.....This last fall I began planning and collecting materials to do a GOOD job! Finally this spring, I did a HUGE reorganization. Reorganizing your library is not for the faint of heart because it takes some real time and effort, but I think I've finally got things settled into a system that I can use and maintain while giving my students free access to my library.
When things are all said and done, I still have some work to do on my class library because I need some more of those wonderful Lakeshore containers and labels, but with a little time and help from my mom who recently retired from working at a library, we were able to get the lionshare of the the organizing done.
One issue with creating a library for the music classroom is that your organizational needs are often different than a regular classroom. I looked everywhere for a set of labels that I liked and decided to develop my own. My list is not exhaustive and it may be that you have more success organizing your books in a more traditional way. These are the labels that work for me. I tried to make them as simple as possible so they would be easy to replace without causing me to have to redo everything. I printed my bin labels on cardstock and slipped them into the adhesive bin label holders from Lakeshore. This way, I can change them out as needed.
Musical Reference - books about instruments, musical anthologies
Musical Works - books that illustrate major musical works.... Carnival of the Animals, Peter & the Wolf, Pictures at an Exhibition...etc.
Non-Fiction - biographies of famous non-musicians, language books, books about different countries,
Patriotic - Books that contain either the song or historical information about patriotic music
Popular Songs - On top of Spaghetti, Wheels on the Bus, Going on a Bear Hunt....etc
Science of Sound - books that I use to as reference for teaching about the science of sound
Texas Music - books about Texas or songs that I use as part of our Go Texas unit
Thanksgiving
Visual Arts - Books that create a strong link between visual arts and music, My many colored days...etc
World Music- stories and songs from around the world
Here are the pictures of how I created my NEW library!
We cut white labels to make book spine labels.
The symbol on the spine of the book matches
the label on the basket. Each label is covered with mailing tape.
We used stickers when we had them, or drew the symbols when we didn't.
This symbol was changed because brown is too close to black and we had pink stickers
I am going to replace these boxes that I got at the dollar store because they are
too small to hold picture books
These are my very old baskets that I will continue to use until I can
replace them with Lakeshore boxes. The labels were reinforced with tape
I keep my most frequently used books at eye level
I look forward to purchasing more bins because the Lakeshore book bins fit best.
Maybe someday I'll even get to replace my very sad looking shelf!
