Thursday, March 10, 2016

Scavenger Hunt Research

Ancient Egypt is one of our major units of study in 6th grade, but it also gets covered briefly in grade one. I met with the first grade teachers to see if there was a way for my students to help theirs' meet some of their learning objectives.  After some discussion we decided that my students could help the first grade students learn about using online resources for research as they discovered what life was like in ancient Egypt.
My students were very excited to cross back to the other side of the bridge to work with the first grade students.  We put everyone with a buddy and after some brief introductions, everyone got busy working on an online scavenger hunt about lifestyles of the various social classes.  
The time went by far too quickly, but we accomplished a lot and had a great time doing it.  Shortly afterward, my students sent each of their buddies a thank you message.  We were all very surprised a few days later when everyone got a hand drawn thank you letter from their 1st grade buddy!


Using Technology in Beginning Band to Excel.




Learning an instrument can be daunting at first. When a new student arrives at ICS they need to join one of the instrumental groups. If they chose to play a band instrument, they first come into beginning band where they learn the fundamentals of their chosen instrument. We aim to accelerate them to the point where they can join in one of the performance bands. This can be tough, especially if they don’t already have a strong musical background.

Today's students have the advantage of technology to help them on their journey. It allows them to focus on weak areas, and get specific help where they need it most.

If a student is struggling with note identification or music theory, I found that http://www.musictheory.net/ is a great tool to help students learn the names of the notes and the basics of music.

Often students are able to read the music, but trying to make the connection from the music to the fingering proves difficult and at times frustrating. The website http://www.musicracer.com/ is a great tool, allowing students to practice identifying the fingering for their instrument.

Do not forget our ever present phone or other device, I encourage students to download a chromatic tuner app to help them practice with their pitch. This is especially helpful for trombones where they need to practice the accuracy of their slide positions. Another very helpful app they can download is a metronome app.

Last but not least is SmartMusic. Well-known to the students as part of their regular class assignments, SmartMusic allows the students get immediate feedback on their playing, including correct notes and timing. It is also very helpful for the beginning band students as it challenges them to play along with the music without stopping and with the correct timing.

If you would like to see for yourself the progress that they are making, you can have them log in and show you the results from the tests that they have done in the past as well as previous recordings of those tests.

Need to know more? Talk to the band teacher, they are excited about seeing the students be challenged, and grow as musicians!

Mr. Wilson

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Grade 8 "Fakebook" pages

As part of our introduction to a new unit on "The Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression" students had to research an influential person from the 1920s. Students choose figures ranging from musicians to entrepreneurs, from celebrities to scientists. They used their laptops to research each celebrity and then created a "Fakebook" profile of their celebrity. They used the question "how has your person contributed to society for good or ill?" as their guiding question and then presented some of their ideas to the class. Check out the students researching below.