Today we focused upon the genre of classical music. We began our day with a review of our list of musical genres and then read Zin, Zin, Zin, which discusses common instruments found in an orchestra. In pairs, the students read a biographical piece about Joseph Haydn, a famous composer during the Classical Era. We watched two Brain Pop clips - one on Mozart and the other on Beethoven. They both contributed to this era is significant ways as well as trained under Joseph Haydn while establishing themselves as artists. The students listened to Haydn's famous "Surprise Symphony" and made many guesses concerning the creation of the "surprise" chord near the beginning of the song - which was written to "surprise" the audience. We played the symphony piece again and as a class pretended to sneak downstairs to the kitchen to get a piece of cake when they were suppose to be sleeping while the song was playing the softer, repetitive notes. During the "surprise" part of the song, when the instruments are loudly played together, the students pretended to be caught by their parents! In the afternoon we listened to and studied Peter & the Wolf. After previously discussing several versions of the "Three Little Pigs", the students were introduced to a version that is different and tells the story from the Wolf's point of view. They used this idea to rewrite in pairs the story of Peter & the Wolf from the Wolf's point of view as well. The students learned how to insert a text box and images into a Smart Notebook file to match their portion of the story. Next week, we will assemble these slides into iPhoto and show them as a slideshow.
*Only Monday students experienced this week due to a snowstorm that canceled further classes.
*Only Monday students experienced this week due to a snowstorm that canceled further classes.