Learning Highlights

K- gr 2 continued working on rolls, glissandos, and double stops with mallets on the xylophones within the context of a rhyme that they spoke aloud while playing. We also focused on maintaining beat to a pop song in a game called Beat Detective. For our music literacy, Kindergarten students are learning to write sixteenth notes in a group of four in preparation for our music dictation. Grades 1/2 are writing four-beat patterns which contain sixteenth notes by dictation. They also have to play and identify four beat patterns that they hear each other play.

Grades 3-4 continue their recorder unit. They are developing fluency in playing and a gentle warm tone. Those of us with skinny fingers have to work harder to ensure we are covering the holes of our recorder with our finger pads, not our finger tips. We have seen our recorder karate belt songs and we are working on our fourth Belt Song. Soon we will be testing to receive our belts. We will be graded based on the following rubric.

NAME OF STUDENT: BELT:

Skill	Descriptor	Always	Mostly	Sometimes	Not Yet
		4 points	3 pts	2 pts	1 pt
Tone	Plays with a gentle, beautiful tone
Tonguing	Starts the note with “doo”
Legato	Connects notes
Fingerings	Uses correct fingerings
Finger Position	Covers holes completely, uses fingerpads
Rhythms	Plays rhythms accurately
Fluency	Plays complete example on the first attempt
Rehearsal Skills	Student quietly waits turn to play

32 possible points Students Point Total : _____

Comments from teacher:

Grades 5-6 simultaneously continue on recorder skills and learning new notes while also preparing a google slides presentation on a music genre of our choice. Mrs. Lim gave a sample presentation so we would know what was expected of our slides. We have also seen our recorder belt list of songs we will be learning, and we also watched a video of our gold belt song (Happy Working Song, Hedwig's Theme) so we could have an idea of tempo, rhythm, and tone. We are also going to be marked based on the above rubric.