July 20, 2023 (Song #2028): T-14*: It’s a two-song day! ”Extraordinary Machine” by Fiona Apple and “I Like Giants” by Kimya Dawson.  Happy Birthday to Malinda Johnson! xoxo

At some point during my teaching career, I realized that, no matter what school you visit, the oldest kids think they’re the coolest; elementary school is no exception.  Kids love music class in K, 1st, 2nd and 3rd (of course they love it – I give them recorders!), but starting in 4th grade, some kids start to realize that loving a teacher, publicly, is not the road to popularity (which is why, as I reflected in T-44 SOTD, I hid in the closet in 6th grade). By the time most kids get to 5th grade, I’ve lost them. It’s sad.

So…In an effort to make music class super duper fun (haha; a girl can try, can’t she?), I started “DJ of the Week”, a unit I created to teach “expression” in music (i.e. dynamics, tempo, timbre and articulation,  the theoretical aspects of music that affect our emotional responses).  Each 5th grader is assigned a date to bring in their own music (no songs with “clean versions” and no super-popular songs; students are encouraged to ask their family to come up with a favorite song that is new to their classmates).  All students have a “DJ of the Week” journal and they start each lesson by writing down how they feel (using the Mood Meter from the R.U.L.E.R  program developed by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence as a guidline), then, while they are listening to the songs, students write down words to describe the  Dynamics, Tempo and Articulations.  At the end, they jot down their mood and discuss how the elements of music can affect a person’s mood.  It’s turned into one of my very favorite activities.

Today’s songs are two songs that I’ve never heard before 5th graders introduced me to them (thanks to Henry Koskoff for the Fiona Apple song; I can’t remember who shared “I Like Giants”, but it must’ve been a pretty cool kid.).