Featuring: Winter Concert Talk, Drum Circle Event Review, AI Song Generator Resource
Hello Friends,
Welcome to the winter concert season! I hope that all your planning and practices are going well! If there is anything I can do to support you in this please send me an email. I’m happy to help!
Winter Concert Talk
This year I'm trying out a new concert schedule and I’m NOT doing a big winter concert. I'm down from seeing the students 3 times a week to 2 times a week. I don’t feel that is enough time to prepare a big concert and to be ready we would have been singing winter songs in October. So, this was my compromise:
A Christmas Caroling sing along and family event with hot chocolate and craft (This will include 2 songs featuring the Choir club and 2or 3 songs by the band club)
Smaller, more casual and classroom music based (sharing what we are learning in class) concerts for a couple grades at a time (k,1 & 2. 3 & 4. 5 & 6.) I’m spreading these out throughout the year too to give me more time to prepare for each. One in November, February, and end of March.
I’m hoping this will also help to solve the following problems we were having:
A whole school concert was giving us “fire code” problems with all the people who wanted to come watch. This way we have smaller groups of people for each concert.
Parents complaining that they couldn’t see their child on stage and/or only doing a couple songs.
All of the teachers need to be present for the concert to supervise the students in their class during the concert when they are not singing. With a smaller more casual concert everyone will stay on stage the whole time and I don’t need supervision.
I’ll let you know how this new adventure turns out. So far, I have only had good feedback from parents and staff.
Drum Circle Event Review
We had an amazing time at our Drum Circle! Thank you to everyone who came out and participated- you made my time there so enjoyable! I felt so inspired and revived afterwards. For those who missed it, Lucas Coffey with “Rhythm, Rhythm, Rhythm” offers drum circle events for your school.
Stay tuned for more networking events!
AI Song Generator Resource
While presenting at the Beginning teachers conference a fun new resource came up! Thank you to the teacher who shared it! Check it out: https://suno.com/
This is an AI song generator and will create a fun song for you on the topic of your choice. I was working with the grade 4 class teaching them about conjunctions so I used that as inspiration for trying out this tool. It came up with lyrics and a melody that an AI generated voice sings for you. A couple of other things to note:
Its downfall is that you can’t see a score to play along. You would have to learn it by rote.
The pictures on the site are not kid friendly so don’t share your screen with your students.
I had to add” make it kid friendly” to the prompt because it was giving me themes in the lyrics that were not appropriate.
It took me about 3 tries before I finally got something that I really liked but those 3 tries only took me about 5 min.
It auto-generates your display name so double check it... I found mine not to be appropriate.
There seems to be a lot of appropriateness issues but once I changed them it seems alright. Just be vigilant when you are using this site. That being said, the song output was worth the trouble to me because the kids loved it and started singing along immediately.
I gave it the following prompt:
a melodic song to sing about conjunctions: so, and, or, but, yet
include the definition of a conjunction
use appropriate words and themes for children
use pop style of music
include the score
And got the following output:
[Verse]
Conjunctions are the words we use to link
They glue our phrases strong like magic ink
They're short but mighty pieces of the chain
Helping sentences to clearly explain
[Verse]
Words like so
And
Or
But
And yet
They help create the best stories you've met
Tiny but they're key in what you say
Linking ideas in a smart way
[Chorus]
So let's sing about conjunctions now
And you'll see just how they wow
Or choose your words and join the fun
But don't forget
The job's just begun
[Verse]
So's for showing reasons oh so neat
And joins together words like friends on the street
Or gives you choices left or right
But says however
Not so bright
[Chorus]
So let's sing about conjunctions now
And you'll see just how they wow
Or choose your words and join the fun
But don't forget
The job's just begun
[Bridge]
Yet is like a twist in tales we tell
Shows contrast
Spinning stories well
Together they make language cool and tight
With conjunctions
Everything feels right
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