The third graders are working hard on their "Student of the Month" performances.  They 
will be performing in February and in March.


In December, we traditionally study the music of Tchaikovsky by watching his Ballet, The 
Nutcracker.

We listened to selections of Native American music in November.  The students were very 
good listeners and were able to identify the instruments they heard in the recordings.  I 
played my Native American flute for them and we practiced improvising together using 
some of the instruments that we talked about.  "The Legend of the Bluebonnets" inspired 
us to remember what we are thankful for in our lives.  We did a musical version of the 
story together and then played Native American rhythm games.  These are quite popular!  
We use lummi sticks, sit in a big circle together and perform various rhythms and motions 
that work on our coordination, concentration, memory and musical rhythms.  The students 
did a wonderful job with this and really worked together as a team with great success.

  3rd graders have begun to read musical notation while playing boomwhackers.  We are 
working hard to learn proper etiquette when 30 or 40 people have musical instruments 
and must play together.  This is not only an exercise for our musical souls but also an 
exercise in respect and following directions.   We actually played along with Haydn's 
Surprise Symphony this week!

  Bishop students in grade 3 have learned about an American composer by the name 
of Aaron Copland.  We read about his life and work together and listened to some of his 
compositions including Fanfare for the Common Man.  We talked about why Copland wrote 
this piece and we also talked about the meaning of the common man in our lives at 
Bishop.  We listened to other Copland works including a selection called Hoedown from his 
ballet Rodeo.  The students enjoyed listening to how Copland weaves American sounds 
into his classical music.  

  Just to keep us up to date musically, we also listened to Hip-Hop and had a short lesson 
on the history of this type of music.  Taking a virtual trip to South America, 3rd graders 
heard Peruvian music and learned about a musical technique called Hocket.  We 
listened to examples of this and also performed some hocket songs of our own.

3rd grade students are also learning about the instruments in the orchestra and have 
begun listening and talking about the string section of the orchestra. The students were 
able to listen to a live violin performance by one of their classmates and a very short and 
painful couple of notes played by their music teacher who never actually studied the violin! 
We are finding out that we love classical music!  We can recognize some music by 
Mozart and Beethoven too....For extra practice and more information on classical music, 
go to my links page and try the San Francisco Symphony's Kids' website.  Have fun!