3rd Grade School Theme 3

I made sure I was on time this time.

'Willoughby Wallaby Woo' by Raffi
    The kids were still excited to sing this again.  I do need to find a better way to pass out the rhythms sticks.  It is a little cumbersome and it takes a long time.

Quarter Note, Eighth Note, Whole Note, Half Note
   We just did a super quick review.

Andante, Allegro
   I introduced the concept of Andante and Allegro.  I had printed up a page that defined Allegro as 'fast, quickly, bright' and Andante as 'at a walking pace' or so I thought.  When I asked to kids which one they thought was faster they all replied Andante.  I look at the board and I had printed the definitions backward.  So I quickly ripped the page up and put the right definitions with the right words.

'Pomp and Circumstance' by Edward Elgar / Animal Parades
   I never knew before this song had Allegro sections.  Obviously we never played that part at graduation obviously.  I also learned that this march is only one of a series of military marches he wrote called pomp and circumstance.  I think it is the only one commonly played.  Another thing I didn't know was that pomp stood for the inspiring marches and hoo-rahs that got everyone excited for war.  Circumstance stood for the realities of war that were less than pretty.
  Listening to the song in its entirety, it felt very pomp and not very much circumstance.  I thought it would be fun for the kids to put together a animal parade to it.  I used Audacity to clip the song into 11 parts.  It went Allegro, Allegro, Allegro, Andante, Andante, Allegro, Allegro, Allegro, Andante, Andante, Allegro each section building a little to a big ending.  I printed up two pages of animal pictures and made a long strip of paper with the sections labeled along it.  Only one kid caught that I had misspelled one of the Andante sections.  Smart kid.
  So I wasn't going to make the same mistake as before so I made them stay in groups according to where they were seated.  This worked and it didn't.  There were quite a few kids who didn't get to choose an animal to put in a section because the other kids in their group completely took over.  My own daughter was in tears at the end but that doesn't surprise me much because she is a little melodramatic.
    As I played each section the kids chose an animal to put in that part of their 'parade.'  So the kids liked this activity a little too much.  Some kids were really listening and choosing an animal.  Others, I have no idea what they were doing.  I noticed the teacher dealing with problems in different parts of the room.  It was extremely hard to get them calmed back down to play the next section.  If I do this again I will cut it down to six sections instead of 11.  It is pretty much a repeat anyway.

A note about audacity.  It is a really cool program you can download from the internet.  You also have to download the Lame Encoder so that you can make MP3s of your final product.  I am not sure what you are supposed to do with the program but I use it to clip music to only the sections I want to use.  It works fabulously and is much easier than trying to fast forward and pause music.