2nd Grade

Students have been exploring tempo and dynamics in music. "In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Edvard Grieg is a great piece for this because it gradually gets both louder and faster. Kids love the excitement that these changes in the music generate. This piece is also a great example of program music. The story of Peer Gynt is a Norwegian folktale. Edvard Grieg composed the music for the play and each piece he wrote tells a specific part of the story. Students got to hear the story first and then track plot points within this song. We added finger lights to our body percussion for a more dramatic effect. This took extreme focus and concentration from each student. They felt so proud when we finally mastered this routine together!

Students have also been honing their decoding skills with rhythmic patterns. They have been matching speech with rhythm and writing "mystery phrases" for partners to decipher. On this day, the theme was the weather. "I got struck by lighting" becomes a four beat pattern using eight notes and quarter notes. "Last weekend felt like summer" becomes ta ta-di ta--di ta-di. ​