Lawrence's Lyrics

Well Done, First Graders

I want to congratulate the First Grade classes who participated in the PTA Program, "An ABC Holiday".  I was so pleased with their stage presence and the way they delivered their music and speaking parts.  For many of the students, this may have been their first time doing a big PTA program and I understand how daunting that can be.  However, they all rose to the occasion and gave a splendid performance.

We also had about 25 students who came on Saturday to "Christmas at Northstar".  We performed our songs again and the students did very well.  Fortunately the weather cooperated and we had warm, sunny skies...the first time in three years for this event!

Thank you, Families, for the support you've given your student during this time.  Hopefully this has been a positive experience that the children will recall for years to come.  Have a very Happy Holiday and New Year!

PTA Music Program on Thursday

This Thursday, December 1, students in the following Music classes will present "An A-B-C  Holiday":  Mrs. Hardin/Mrs. Dills, Mrs. Hawley,  Mrs. Luna/Mrs. Dills, Ms. Stanley, Mrs. Wallace and Mrs. Vazquez.  The program will begin at 6:30 P.M. in the McCall Cafeteria.  Students should report to their classes by 6:15.  They may wear dressy clothing in holiday colors.  Please make sure they wear comfortable shoes that will not cause them to slip and fall on the stage.

Then, on Saturday, December 3, from 1:30 - 2:00, these students have another opportunity to perform their holiday songs.  We have been invited to participate in "Christmas at Northstar", at Northstar Church on Blue Springs Rd. in Kennesaw.  This is an outdoor event and parking is FREE.  Students should wear their blue McCall t-shirt and long blue jeans.  If they do not own a McCall shirt, a plain white shirt is fine.  Remember to bring jackets in case the weather is chilly.

Looking forward to seeing you at these exciting events!

Directions to Northstar Church:

From Acworth/ Emerson on Hwy. 41 - Head south on Highway 41 toward Barrett Pkwy. You will turn left at the second traffic light past the Lowe's Home Improvement store onto Blue Springs Road (there will be an Aldi grocery store on your left). NorthStar Church is approximately a half mile down on the left - 3413 Blue Springs Road.

Thanks for the Music

       I can hardly believe it is almost Thanksgiving!  The year is quickly coming to a close.  As I reflect on my blessings, I am very grateful for my job here at McCall.  I love teaching music and interacting with all my students.  For me it is more than just a job; it's a dream come true.

October was a full month of active music-making.  In Kindergarten we focused on high and low sounds and keeping a steady beat.  Our song of the week was from South Africa, "Ikhanda Maslombe" (My Head and My Shoulders).  We learned to sing it in English and in Zulu and had a lot of fun doing the motions.

Than we "monkey-ed" around with "Three Little Monkeys", teasing Mr. Crocodile.  We used our low, middle, and high voices to imitate the voices of the monkeys.  We pretended to climb the coconut tree and played the coconuts up high and down low.  From Africa we traveled to Japan and learned the song "O Ma Washi"  (Go Around the Cat's Eye).  The students tapped the steady beat on chopsticks and played a wind up game as we sang the song in English and in Japanese.  Another cat song the students learned was "Juba", from the African American tradition. The students were able to compare and contrast Juba and O Ma Washi.  We also played a chase game; the children took turns being Juba and the yellow cat.  This game song is always a huge favorite with the classes.

On Friday we concluded with a pumpkin music lesson.  The students learned to sing "Pumpkin, Pumpkin, Round and Fat" as they made different faces (happy, sad, angry, scary, sleepy, silly, surprised).  They showed the high and low tones in the song with their hands.  Then they used  speaking and singing voices to perform "Five Little Jack-o-lanterns".  The children played the steady beat on the drums.  They also took turns creating various high and low patterns on the Promethean Board.  They discovered that reading music is like reading a story... we track left to right.

In the first grade classes the song of the week was "Shine, Shine Shine".  We choreographed it and enjoyed singing the call and response middle section.  By the end of the week the students were able to lead the call individually. The students did a good job singing in their head voices.  

The lessons in first grade centered primarily on playing and reading rhythms.  The students learned to say "Ta" when there is one sound on the beat (quarter note), and "Ti-Ti" when there are two sounds on the beat (eighth notes).  A rest is a quiet beat.  They sang the song "Big Black Cats", first walking/running the rhythm.  Then we transferred the rhythm to percussion instruments; woodblocks played the quarter notes and glockenspiels played the faster eighth notes.

They also sang "The Muffin Man", taking turns removing muffins from the plates on the chart.  The students chanted "Ta" whenever they came to a muffin, but when there was an empty plate, they showed the quiet beat, or rest.  The students enjoyed making people rhythms when they sang "Rain Rain Go Away".  One child under the umbrella was a quarter note ("Ta") and two children under an umbrella were eighth notes ("Ti-Ti").  They experimented with making different combinations of quarter and eighth notes.

The first graders had a blast moving to the beat of "The Itsy Bitsy Spider".  We listened to two different versions...one by Carly Simon and the other by Little Richard.  They also discovered that a phrase is a musical sentence.  We moved to the beat of "In the Hall of the Mountain King", changing movements on each phrase.  The students loved the challenge of keeping up with the increased tempo (accelerando) of the piece!

Stay tuned for more updates from the music room!  Have a happy Thanksgiving!

An ABC Holiday

Some of our first graders have begun preparing for the December PTA program.  Students who come to music class with Mrs. Luna/Mrs. Dills, Mrs. Hardin/Mrs. Dills, Mrs. Vazquez, Mrs. Wallace, Ms. Stanley, and Mrs. Hawley will present a special program of holiday music on Thursday, December 1st, at 6:30 in the cafeteria of McCall Primary.  The program is entitled "An ABC Holiday" and will feature songs and dances from various December holiday traditions as well as some familiar favorites.  All the selections tie into our first grade music curriculum and standards.  Students may wear dressy clothes in seasonal colors, but take care to wear comfortable shoes that will not cause them to slip and fall on the stage.

The students received a letter and a permission form for the program last week.  Please return those forms as soon as possible.  I need to know how many students will attend that evening.  Here is a link to the permission form if you need another one.  The students will need a signed permission form in order to participate.

Download PTA Permission Form December 2011

Download Spanish PTA permission form December 2011

In addition, we have been invited to sing again at the "Christmas at Northstar Festival" on Saturday, December 3rd, from 1:30 - 2:00, at the Northstar Church in Kennesaw.  We will perform pieces from our PTA program.  Parents will need to provide transportation.  We will plan to meet at 1:15 by the stage at Northstar.  This is an outdoor event, so please bring jackets.  We will wear our McCall shirts and long blue jeans.  Maps for this location will be provided soon.  I hope we will have a large McCall delegation that day!  It is a fun event and families are welcomed to stay later and enjoy the festivities.  Parking is free.

We are excited about these upcoming performance opportunities.  Please e-mail me with questions.  I look forward to seeing you in December!

September... FALL into Music!

 

 

 

 

I enjoyed meeting some of you at McCall's Open House Night on September 8.  There were nineteen families who visited the music room and I appreciate you coming by.  I look forward to seeing more of you in the months ahead.

We've had a fast but busy first month in the music classroom.  In Kindergarten the students took a "trip" to the farm as we sang about ducks, hens, lambs, cows, and horses.  We focused on unpitched percussion technique as the children played the rhythm sticks, tamborines, maracas, cowbells, and toneblocks to accompany their songs.  They also reviewed their colors while incorporating some locomotor movement-- walking/stopping, jogging, jumping, tip-toeing, and galloping.  We worked on concepts such as same/different, fast/slow, loud/soft, and up/down.  On Friday we listened to "The Wild Horseman" composed by Robert Schumann.  The instructional focus was steady beat/ AABA form and we activiated the experience with stick horses.  Hopefully your student brought home a FAMILY MUSICAL MOMENT explaining this activity and how you can share this experience together.

 

In First Grade we reviewed some of the concepts introduced in Kindergarten such as steady beat, up/down, and singing voice vs. speaking voice.  They learned a greeting song in English and Spanish  in which they also used some American Sign Language.  We worked on beat with the rhyme, "Hickory Dickory Dock".  The students played glissandos on the glockenspiels on the words "up" and "down".  From there they progressed to playing glissandos on the other barred instruments for the song "The Wind Blew East" from the Bahamas.  We discovered that the smaller bars make higher sounds and the longer bars make lower sounds.  The students worked on singing the sol la mi intervals which is one of the assessed standards this grading period.  The song, "Sol, Solecito" from Mexico helped us to accomplish this.  All week we listened to Leroy Anderson's famous piece, "The Syncopated Clock", learning about form, beat, and the terms "staccato" and "legato".  (Ask your student what these words mean.)  On Friday we used scarves to activate the experience further.  The students enjoyed moving their scarves to reflect the style and form of the music.  They were also given a FAMILY MUSICAL MOMENT to bring home about this selection.

 

Thanks for your interest and support of our music program at McCall Primary.  It is a privilege and a delight to teach here.  Please check back to read about all the learning that is taking place in the music room!

 

 

Welcome to McCall Primary's Music Class!

 

 

Welcome Back Students!

I hope you had an amazing Summer and you are looking forward to a wonderful year in music.  I'm so excited to be your teacher.  We have a lot of fantastic things to learn this year.  We will be...

• Singing
• Playing
• Moving
• Creating
• Evaluating
• Analyzing

I have many fun and challenging lessons to share and I know this will be a ROCKIN' year in music!

For those of you who are new to McCall, I am Mrs. Lydia Lawrence, the music specialist.  This is my third year at McCall, but I taught in Cobb County for eleven years prior to taking some time off to raise my three children.  I have two sons in highschool and a daughter in sixth grade.  While enjoying my time as a stay-at-home mom, I also taught Music part time at a local preschool for eight years.

I was born and raised in Monrovia, LIBERIA, West Africa, and attended the American Cooperative School there.  After graduation I moved to East Tennesse where I attended Carson-Newman College, studying music education with a piano emphasis. I earned my B.M. from Carson-Newman and went on to obtain my M.M.E. from Georgia State University.  I am active in various professional organizations, including the Atlanta Chapter of the Orff-Schulwerk Association (AOSA), the Atlanta chapter of the Kodaly Educators of Georgia (KEGA), The National Association for Music Education (NAfME), and the Early Childhood Music and Movement Association (ECMMA).  I enjoy playing the piano and I accompany the choir at my church.  I also am fond of traveling, attending plays and concerts, and learning about other cultures. Each summer I participate with the Cobb Summer Singers.  We just completed our sixth season of singing. In addition, I stay busy supporting my children as they are involved in marching band.    We love music at our house!

I am so privileged to have your children in my class this year.  My philosophy of music education is that all children are musical and with understanding comes an appreciation and life long love of all types of music.  At the primary level, I incorporate a lot of movement into my lessons.  We spend time singing, moving, playing instruments, listening/analyzing, reading/notating music using iconic and traditional notation, and learning to be a polite and attentive audience.  We learn about melody (pitch moves up/down or stays the same), rhythm (steady beat, tempo), form (AB/ABA, verse/refrain), expressive qualities (loud/soft dynamics, staccato/legato), and style/history/composers.  All this is accomplished through a playful, child-friendly manner.

I am excited about some supplemental music curriculum that the county has adopted for elementary music this year.  We recently received GAMEPLAN, a sequential, developmentally appropriate music curriculum developed by two prominent music specialists from Nevada.  We also are fortunate to have the Phyllis Weikart Movement materials as well as the John Feierabend books/CDs for early childhood. With this wealth of valuable information I am even more excited about teaching this year.

Each nine week period students receive a 3-part music grade.  For the first quarter in Kindergarten this grade is based upon:

• Echoing simple singing and speech patterns
• Imitating steady beat with accuracy 
• Learning skills and behavior 

A "3" denotes consistently; "2" is sometimes, and a "1" is rarely.  For the behavior grade, S = satisfactory, P= progressing, and N= needs improvement.

 

For the first quarter In First Grade the students are evaluated on:

• Singing the so-la-mi intervals with accuracy
• Performing steady beat with accuracy
• Learning skills and behavior

First Graders also receive a 1, 2, or 3 and either an S, P, or N for behavior/learning skills.

For a complete listing of the Georgia Music Performance Standards for Kindergarten and First Grade, you may visit the Cobb County web page and click on the PICASSO for Parents link.

Please visit my blog regularly for news on what your students are learning in Music, as well as important information on upcoming events.  The best way to contact me is through my e-mail:  Lydia.Lawrence@cobbk12.org.

Thank you for your support and your confidence in me!  I look forward to a fabulous year!

 

Bravo, First Graders!

The First Graders gave a splendid performance Thursday night of their musical, "Friends".  Two months of preparation culminated in a beautiful musical message about the importance of friendship.  I was very proud of the students as they have worked very hard learning the music and script.  For many of the students this was their first time on stage.  They are a very determined group though and I commend them for their courage and perserverance!  When I told them that this musical was originally published in a second grade music curriculum, they were happily surprised.  All in all, they did an awesome job!

An event like this is a team effort.  I thank all the first grade teachers involved for assisting me in helping the children learn their lines and songs.  Mrs. Perkerson and her art students created the colorful and creative backdrop for the stage.  Ms. Cornwell and Mrs. Hedrick worked the sound for me which was a big load off my shoulders!  Our fabulous custodial staff always does a great job setting up for the programs.  Mr. Farrell and Dr. Smith are supportive and encouraging of the arts at our school. I am very fortunate to work with such a helpful and talented staff!

Parents, I have enjoyed working with your children on this project. Thanks for bringing them and cheering them on.   I will certainly miss them next year, but I hope they will continue their musical pursuits in second grade!

PTA Program - "FRIENDS"

ATTENTION!

Students in the following classes:  Mrs. Dills/Ms. Caufman, Mrs. Marsili, Mrs. Wallace, Ms. Wehr, Mrs. Simon/Ms. Olsen, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Powers, Ms. Stanley--

Your PTA Program is almost here!  We will present "Friends" on Thursday, April 28, at 6:30 P.M.  Students need to be in their homerooms by 6:15 that evening.  They may dress up, but wear comfortable shoes that will not cause them to slip and fall.  The presentation will immediately follow a brief PTA business meeting.  The students have been working very hard learning the songs and their speaking roles.  We look forward to seeing you there!

Good Show at Big Shanty Festival!

 
There were 40+ first graders who came out to the Big Shanty Festival this past Saturday to perform on the City Hall Stage.  They sang some songs from their upcoming PTA program "FRIENDS".  I was very  pleased with the large turn-out and very proud of all the students for the excellent way in which they sang. Thank you, parents, for bringing your students on Saturday.  We couldn't have asked for a more gorgeous day; although a bit on the breezy side, it was sunny and not overly hot.  I am looking forward to the PTA program on April 28 when the kids will present the program in its entirety.  More on that soon...

Festival Map

Download a map for the Big Shanty Festival.

We are singing at the City Hall Stage.

Download Entertainer Map