In the first slide I use animation to go one line at a time with the students. Each sentence is a clue to let the students figure out where Mr. Maraca is. Finally the word RUSSIA presents itself at the bottom (after all clues are given) so that they can guess!
One of the most important things I like to discuss with the students are the similarities and differences in our American culture with the other countries. This doesn't always mean we are only talking about the music background, but sometimes about their economy and culture. One of the National Standards for Music education is: 9. Understanding music in relation to history and culture. In order to do this successfully I think that it is important to show the students other historical facts about those countries to help them understand where music comes into play.
After students learn about the culture/economy we discuss some of the famous genre's of music and the famous composers. Here are a few of the composers we spoke about.
Many countries have their own form of instruments. This slide shows historical Russian instruments, and then we decide as a group which of the 4 traditional family of instruments they belong in.
Peter and the Wolf is a famous children's symphony that is written by our composer of the month, Sergei Prokofiev. This symphony introduces the instruments of the orchestra to the students through music and through a story that Prokofiev wrote. Students have a chance to watch the Disney version of this in class.
After watching Peter and the Wolf we do a matching game to see who was paying attention! Which instrument goes with which character? Each character in Peter and the Wolf is assigned a specific instrument that always plays when their character is on screen.
Those are only part of the slides for Russia, however if you would like to get the entire PowerPoint please visit my store at Teachers Pay Teachers
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