Third Grade Program: You Belong Here

Third Grade Program: You Belong Here

Need ideas for a third grade program? In today's blog post, I'm writing about my program, "You Belong Here."

I created the program based on the beautifully illustrated book  by M.H. Clark and Isabelle Arsenault. about how we are all unique, and how we are all loved! 


Here is a summary of songs and dances I used for the program (and make sure to keep reading to find out about a fun 5-day musical program challenge I'm hosting in a few weeks!)

I did this program with third grade, but it could also work for second grade. I split the text up between 28 narrators. For the first part of the program, I had two narrators come up and read the text in the book from "The stars belong" to "here with you."

After those two narrators, I had students sing "Who has seen the wind," which is based off of the text by Christina Rossetti. The notation can be found in this blog post.

I taught the song to all of the third graders, but had one class arrange the song, figuring out what should go where. In this case, the third graders decided to play the gong, then the wind chimes, then sing the song, then add an alternating bourdon on instruments, then have soloists play in la pentatonic, then sing again with instruments, and then end with wind chimes and the gong. Of course, your students' arrangement might look quite different!

I had two more narrators come up, and read from "The whales" to "dunes are for." Since that part is about the ocean, I then had one class perform "Waves of Tory." Here is a version of "Waves of Tory"; since I was performing this with third grade, I had students do a simple "Peel the Orange" instead of the fancy one in this video!

Then I had two more narrators come up and read from "And the trees" to "they've made." Since this part is about birds, I had students sing "Kookaburra" with this fun accompaniment.

Then, I had four narrators come up and read from "And you belong" to "water is near." Then, we sung "Frog in the meadow," which can be found here. I had students sing twice, with a frog guiro like this one played 8 times between the first and second singing.

Two more narrators came up, and read from "And the otters" to "run blue." Since this part is about fish, we tried some special effects (inspired by this blog post by Amy Abbott), and had students perform the movement from John Feierabend's "Move it" DVD, wearing white gloves with glow bracelets beneath, in the dark. It was SO cool! Here is the video:

Two more narrators came up, and read from "And you belong" to "love the most." Then, I had students sing "Love Somebody," with one of the classes accompanying on instruments. I used the arrangement found here on TpT.

Two more narrators read from "The hares" to "night turns cold." Then, I had one class perform "One to 4" from this hand drumming book. As a class, they arranged it for body percussion and hand drums, and they loved it!

Two more narrators read from "The foxes" to "ready to run."  We had students sing "Inanay," which I've heard is about animals from the Torres Strait Islands near Australia. Here is the notation:

\

Five more narrators came up and read from "The crickets" to "storms start to blow." Then, I had one class perform a line dance to "I love a rainy night" by Eddie Rabbitt. You can find the dance directions on Sanna Longden's website here (click on "CD 2 Dance Description.") I used the simplified dance she listed (since I typically teach the dance to fifth graders, who also LOVE the dance!)

Four more narrators came up and read from "Some creatures" to "Where you belong." Then, I had students sing the song "What I am," by Will.i.am, which you can see here:

This song was our school song this year, so it was often played on the announcements. It has a great message and the kids loved singing it! After some digging, I finally found an accompaniment track here. It was a bit pricey for an accompaniment track, but I couldn't find one anywhere else, so was excited I found it!

The third graders really enjoyed this performance, and I was very pleased with what they did musically, from singing, to movement, to playing instruments! Hopefully I've explained everything so that you could recreate it or adapt it for your own students.

I hope this post has been helpful for you! Have fun planning!

SaveSaveSaveSave

End of the Year Music Teacher Checklist

End of the Year Music Teacher Checklist

It is May...which means it's already time to start thinking about the end of the year! In my district, our last day is May 25, so we have just a few weeks left. There is SO much to do at the end of the year, so in today's post, I'll lay out all of the different things I think about and check off my list for the end of the year. Make sure to keep reading until the end, since I will have a free Google Sheets checklist that you can make a copy of and edit as needed!

At my school, we receive an EOY checklist from our principal around this time of year, but as a music teacher, there are several other "must do" items that aren't on the typical classroom checklist. Here are all of the things I think about and do as I wrap up the year in my music classroom:

Organization and cleaning

I have lots of storage in my room, from bookshelves, to drawers, to an entire storage closet! So I ask myself these questions:

• Have I organized and cleaned my bookshelves, dusting, putting things back where they are supposed to go, etc.? Here is a great blog post by Tracy King about organizing your music room.
• Have I organized drawers? My desk drawer is a total mess by this time of the year! I try to clean that as well as my mallet drawer, my props drawer, my CD drawer, etc.
• Have I cleaned countertops? I love Lysol Disinfectant Wipes for this task!
• Have I organized my file cabinets? I have tons of choir music that is just sitting in my file cabinet, waiting for me to file!
• Have I cleaned my storage closet? My closet is in BAD need of some cleaning and reorganization, and I would much rather do it now than come back to a messy closet in August!
• Have I pulled any books or resources that I'd like to take home with me for planning over the summer? (Read this blog post about my planning process during the summer.)

Orff Instruments

• Have I found my missing bars? I often end up with missing bars around this time of year, so I try to locate those and either put them on the instrument, on the side of the instrument, or for glockenspiels, put them in a drawer.
• Have I vacuumed out the inside of the Orff instruments? 
• Have I fixed any bent or broken pegs? Check out these awesome blog posts for help!

Non-pitched percussion

• Have I thrown away any broken instruments? Sometimes wood starts coming off the edge of a wood block or maracas break. Have I thrown those away?
• Have I taken note of instruments I'd like to purchase for next year? For example, I'm pretty disappointed with the finger cymbals I have, so I'm making a mental note to buy more with next year's budget!

Technology

• Have I updated devices as needed?
• Have I taken any videos, photos, etc. off of the iPads? Sometimes you need to send those to yourself anyway, so you can assess, and sometimes you just need to delete material from this year.
• Have I taken note of apps I would like to purchase or download? Check out this blog post for my 10 favorite apps!
• Have I dusted and/ or cleaned technology as needed? 
• Have I shut down everything on the very last day?

Inventory

• Have I completed inventory and turned into my administrator? 
• Have I returned any borrowed resources from music teachers, borrowed books from the library, etc.?

Class decor

• Have I taken down all my decor?
• Have I taken down my bulletin boards? (And while I'm at it, am I thinking about next year's bulletin boards? Here is a blog post I wrote about bulletin boards, and another fun one by Tracy King about borders!)
• Have I thought about next year's decor? I've already decided to do a world theme in my music classroom, which I'll be blogging about as the decor comes up. In the meantime, here is a Pinterest board with some fun ideas!

Orders for next year

• Have I filled out my classroom supply order? In my district, I have to buy classroom supplies, such as staples, pencils, etc.
• Have I filled out my music room order for resources, instruments, etc.? For some great ideas about what to buy, check out this post by David Row.
• Have I written grants or requests to PTO for instruments or resources I can't buy with my regular budget? I've received Orff instruments, iPads, and a world music drum set all from writing grants, so it's very much worth it to try! Here is a blog post about writing grants.

Recorders and band instruments

• Have I handed out recorders for the summer? My fourth graders get to take them home at the end of the year, so I hand them back at the end of the year. 
• Have I made sure all band instruments were brought home with students or returned to the music store? 

Paperwork

• Have I recycled any paperwork I don't need anymore?
• Have I shredded any documentation, like health concerns, that I don't need any more (since I'll be getting new forms at the start of the school year?) Note: You'll want to wait until the very last day to do this, when you're not teaching anymore.
• Have I filed any paperwork, workshop handouts, etc., that I'll be using the following year?

Lesson plans

• Have I edited or added notes to my lesson plans, so that if I want to re-use or tweak them the following year, I remember what worked well and what didn't?
• Have I turned in this year's lesson plans to my administrator? I have to do this at my school district, but you may not have to! If you do, I find it way easier to put them on a flash drive or share them in Google Drive than to print all of them out!

Grades

• Have I graded any written work, and handed them back to students?
• Have I graded other work, such as videos, SeeSaw portfolio work, etc.?
• Have I completed grades for every grade level?
• Have I written comments for students as needed?

Whew! That is quite the list! To get this list as a Google Sheet, click here. I made it as a "view" only file, so you will need to make a copy of the document, then add it to your Google Drive to edit it.

If you have any other items to add, feel free to comment below, or simply add it to your own Google Sheet! Thanks for reading, and good luck with the end of the year!