Thanksgiving week was filled with opportunities to show how thankful we at Maury are for what we have. Those opportunities continued in the Music Room, where our students used a simple song about gratitude to explore vocal improvisation, instrumental accompaniment, and composition.
We approached the song through movement, which provided an excellent time for our students to work together, performing a movement piece without any words. Once we were totally in sync, we added words and melody to our movements, creating a sweet song that our older students even got to perform in canon! After we combined our voices to sing together, our students used things for which they were thankful to create simple rhythms which the rest of the class echoed. Putting that together with our song made a class rondo that featured thanks for everything from a great school to the armed forces to friends!
Even though the song we learned was simple, it provided a starting point from which our different classes headed in different directions. Our youngest students stopped after singing and sharing for what we are thankful. Older students got to sing the song in canon, compose rhythms in a group, and learn accompaniment for the song. To see what fourth grade accomplished, head to @maurymaestro on Twitter to find a link to a video.
