Presenting Mrs. Hollaran's 6th grade class

After the students learned the proper techniques to play boomwhackers (you can check out the boomwhacker introduction here) the students took the first step towards composing their own boomwhacker melodies.

 The students are still learning how to read a 5 line staff. This is the first step in learning to read/write music. By using this grid they can add the ta, titi, and tikatika notation to write the music. The different colors indicate which boomwhacker is playing at what time.  When there are multiple colors in one box, than multiple boomwhackers are playing at the same time.  This also gets the students ready to ready music, they read music the same as reading a book, from left to right.

This was one group's composition in Mrs. Hallaran's 6th grade class. The students had to compose the music, practice the music together, and perform it for the class in a boomwhacker recital!

Here is the very first boomwhacker performance by these wonderful students!

Boomwhacker Warm Ups

I am super excited to announce that this year in general music we have brand new instruments, BOOMWHACKERS!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Boomwhackers are plastic tubes in varying length's that when "whacked" on different surfaces will produce a note.  These instruments are great tools to teach rhythm, notes on a staff, sight reading, and solfege.  They are also great tools in helping the students learn to become composers.  Another added bonus is that students who play these instruments are only responsible for one or two notes at a time. When playing something like a recorder they have to be able to play multiple notes at once.  This gives the students more time to process what they are playing, before going onto an instrument that is more demanding in the amount of notes to be played. 

To introduce the Boomwhackers we used a boomwhacker warm-up PowerPoint that I developed. 

First thing is first, the RULES! These are important so the students know the expectations that I have for them when playing the instruments. These are instruments are meant to be "whacked" on things, so it is important to establish what to whack and what not to whack.  

 After the rules we show them the first step which is reading on a 2 line staff. Eventually students will be able to read on a 5 line staff, but to start we are only using 2 notes, sol and mi.

 Then the students get to play 5 different warm ups using the sol & mi boomwhacker tubes. Here is one example:

 It's still important that the students sing, and the boomwhackers also teach solfege, so after playing the warm ups, we sing them using the solfege counterparts.

Here is an example of the solfege warm ups!