Summer School Music

[nafmeadmin]

Starting next week I will be teaching a group of 12 3-5th graders at a summer enrichment program in an inner-city school. I am excited because I have them for an hour a day for two weeks and I feel like they can accomplish a lot. I have no resources and the principal seems to want something more chorus-geared. The kids have never had music class and I do want to do general music lessons, but have them somehow connect with a theme or something so the kids have a reason to want to come everyday. I was thinking of having a tour around the world and having them explore rhythm, pitch, form, ect, through folk songs from all over, but I also want the lessons to be full of them learning the academic stuff in a good order of difficulty. Does anyone have any ideas?

[nafmeadmin]

I’m doing something similar with students in the Philippines for 8 weeks. Currently we are studying timbre through body percussion. We learned about timbre, ostinato, improvisation, refrain, and form. The first week they were free to come up with absolutely anything but had to use 3 different body percussion timbres. The next week I taught about ostinato and they had to layer 3 ostinati. Next was improv, refrain, form, etc. Each week had a new term and so they created a new (short) performance. At the end of our time together they will perform a larger body percussion piece that they create. I’m also considering allowing them to have a week where they can use props instead of body percussion.

I have to integrate choral pieces into my general music class during the school year so I feel like I have a good balance of general music concepts as well as performance prep. The final concert might be mostly choral output, but that doesn’t mean the students can’t learn a bunch more about music!

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