4th Grade Recorder

Today I felt the need to share how wonderful my 4th grade students are. Every Friday morning when I'm ready for the week to be over, my class comes in and the work that they do never fails to put a smile on my face.

This month, we have been busily preparing for our Recorder Concert, which will be on June 12th. On Friday, they were given their songs/groups for the concert. Each group was tasked with learning the song, then coming up with a creative way to perform it. At the end of the allotted time, I was so excited to see that each group had come up with different ways to perform- with no prompting from me whatsoever!

Group 1 played Cricket Lullaby- from the Green Belt of Recorder Karate. They decided that one person would begin the song and each measure they would add one person in, until everyone was eventually playing.

Group 2 played Suo Gan- from Recorder Express and Green Belt of Recorder Karate. It's important to note that they were sitting across the room from Group 1 and didn't know what the other group was planning. They chose to play their song starting with everyone playing, then slowly eliminating players until only one person was playing by the end of the song.

Group 3 played Down at the Station from Recorder Express. This group is the most advanced, so I challenged them to create a longer performance instead of just playing the song once through. They chose to play the song through once as a group, then play it in pairs, then play it as a 4-part round.

After each of the performances, I asked the other students to identify how the group had made their performance unique. It was great to see the creativity coming out in these students, especially when they are in the midst of state standardized testing!