I must say that I was very nervous as I prepared for my first music lesson. This is such an new thing for me. Thankfully, Jennifer Purdy gave me some great advice and direction when we met.
For the first visit I really wanted to focus on getting to know the kids, so I wanted to do a simple activity to get them excited about music and to give me a chance to meet each of them. Since Halloween is coming up, I thought it would be really fun to bring "Danse Macabre" by Saint Saens, which is one of my favorite pieces and great for the spirit of Halloween. I wanted the children to create a story and characters from this piece as we listened. They would be able to use some of the new adjectives they had been studying in their synonyms and antonyms unit.
As I walked into Mrs. Pryut's classroom, I was greeted by some of her awesome 6th-graders. They all made me feel so welcome there. When it was my turn to do music time, I took some time to ask each student for their name and what kind of music they liked. I was very impressed with how quiet and respectful the students were of each other! Then we dived right into the music. I explained the piece to them, and that I wanted them to signal each time a new character was introduced by raising their hand. As we listened, the hand raising became so frequent that some students even just kept their hands up. I realized that this wouldn't work for the entire 8 minutes of music, so with their heightened sensitivity to the music and some character ideas, I asked the class to get out a piece of paper and a pencil. We listened from the beginning again, and this time as we listened each student wrote a story using at least 5 "creative adjectives". I walked around the classroom as we listened, and I was amazed at the creative stories that these students were writing. When the piece ended, we listed some of the "creative adjectives" the class used, and then some of the students shared their stories. They are all so bright and creative! Music was a great inspiration for their creative writing skills!
