School Supply Drop Off Night

Welcome to our new Ethridge Music Class Blog!  Most (or all) of you reading this post probably attended the School Supply Drop Off Night at Ethridge and scanned the QR code outside of the music room.  Thank you for checking out this site and I hope that you'll come back to it regularly to find out all of the fun activities that are going on in your child's classroom!!

In this blog, you will find several tabs at the top of the page.  When you click on the tabs, you will find more information.  Some of the tabs at the top of this blog are:  Choir    Orff   Events  Quavers.
As you move your mouse over the word on the tabs, it will change color to grey and you can click on it to take you to another page of this blog.  There are several events already listed in "Events" as well as some information listed under "Choir" and "Orff."

There are a lot of new things coming to our music classroom this year!!  I'm excited to get started and to teach and collaborate with your children as we create music.  Orff is one of our newest additions to our classroom.  Orff is a method of teaching and uses xylophones in groups to allow children to perform, create, compose and work together to create incredible music.  Movement, dances and stories are also used.

Another new addition to our classroom is called Quaver's.  Quavers is an online website that allows students to experiment with music in a very technological way and there is an amazing amount of material on the web.  I attended training this summer on it and will have more information after September when the materials are at our school!

A third addition to our classroom are student roles in the class.  Students have always had opportunities to lead, direct, work together and to assist with Smartboard, technology, instruments and daily help like holding the door and turning on/off the lights.  This year it's getting bigger!

1.  ROCK STAR:  Students will have the opportunity to be a "Rock Star" and help lead vocal warm-ups, xylophone warm-ups, singing games, and many other exciting roles.

2.  LIGHTING DIRECTOR:  Students will be in charge of the ambience of the classroom.  This can change often depending on what activity we are doing.  They will be in charge of the lights going on/off.

3.  GUEST WRITER: Students will have the chance to send me a short or long article about what they are learning in class, how we are learning song material, giving information about instruments, how they are played, the rules in our classroom and other fun topics that they will help choose.  After the students send me their article, I will post in on this blog for others to see and comment on.  It will be exciting to hear what students are doing from the students perspective!

4.  VIDEOGRAPHER:  Students will use the iPad in class to record their class performing, dancing, moving, reading rhythms, and doing everyday music activities.  These video recordings will be posted on this blog in the "VIDEO" tab at the top.

These are some of the roles that will be available for your students as they go through our year together.

Thank you for the privilege of teaching your children and I look forward to a great year at Ethridge!!

Mrs. Grant