Musical Note Poetry

02 June 2012
As it was our testing week this past week, I tried to keep our activities light and fun.  However, I am starting to stress about getting it all in before the end of the year.  The key to this will be integration!  We made great little musical note poems this week to integrate our poetry writing with our music unit.  The students had a lot of fun with them, and they turned out beautiful!  I can't wait to make a fabulous display out of them when all the students have finished.
Musical Words - words using the staff notes @ Runde's Room
My students were already pretty good at identifying notes on the staff, so after a quick review, I let them work in pairs to create as many "musical" words as they could - using the letters from the music notes:  C, D, E, F, G, A, B.

They also had to write the notes for all of the words they found.  This picture shows just some of the words the students found.







photo of Musical Poetry assignment poster @ Runde's Room


This was our anchor chart showing our learning goal and success criteria.

Students needed to write a poem that had at least 2 quatrains, a rhyme scheme of their choice, and a pleasing rhythm.  They needed to include at least 8 "musical words" - one per line.










I printed off an image of sheet music I found, and we used tea bags to give the sheet music an antique look.  This was used for our background frame to mount our poems on.
















These are two of our finished products!!!  LOVE them!  When all the students finish, I'm going to make a bulletin board display on black paper ... and I think I have a music border in one of my cupboards ...



I'm working a little product right now to integrate my music unit with my math unit on fractions - hoping to finish it this weekend so I can get my students working on it early this week.  This month is going to FLY by (thank goodness!!!)





Happy Saturday!  It's a dreary one here, but I'm excited to get to some baking with the rhubarb from my garden.  I think there's a strawberry rhubarb crumble in our future tonight!

14 comments

  1. Jen, these are wonderful!!! How creative!! And what a good way to integrate poetry with music! I'm pinning this idea! :)

    Molly
    Lessons with Laughter

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  2. This is awesome Jen. I especially like the background paper touch! I wonder if you were to write an entire song with the words and actually play it with the recorder, what it would sound like! Maybe I will use my last 2 weeks of school to find out. :)

    ~Stephanie
    Teaching in Room 6

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  3. Great idea! Hope the testing went well :) Jen

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  4. My students are learning to read music this year. What a great idea!
    Artistry of Education

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  5. Absolutely love this idea. I teach band and language arts, but never put the two together with poetry. Thanks so much for the inspiration.

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  6. This is really neat! I'll have to give it a try come fall! Thanks, and I'm your newest follower! :)

    Josh
    Mr. B's Beach Brains

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  7. Love this idea, Jen. I'm always impressed with how you incorporate the arts in your curriculum.

    Elizabeth
    Fun in Room 4B

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  8. Great idea and I would copy it but, um, we don't do music at our school. Or art. Or really anything outside of speed reading. Sigh. But next year I'm FREEEEEEEE-social studies here I come! :)

    Shannon
    http://www.irunreadteach.wordpress.com

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  9. What a great idea! Thanks for sharing.

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  10. Jen, this is such a great activity!!! I'm so jealous of your ability to integrate music & art into the curriculum! You have a gift my friend! Your kids will ACE that test!

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  11. Hi, I'm your newest follower! It's so rare to find other Canadian bloggers. Check out my blog, I'm trying to collect Canadian teaching resources in a linky party.

    reading with miss d

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  13. I just discovered this now and had to laugh. I do this also! It's a whole lot of fun--kids do love it! btw my Canadian better half says hello :-) We were just up there. LOVE your blog!

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  14. This is great lesson, and I have used a similar format in my music room. The student examples are good. Make sure to emphasize musical accuracy, however with the little staves. The second example includes the treble clefs, but the first one does not. This is an important detail. Thanks, and I look forward to more lesson ideas!

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