Hello! I'm Amy M. Burns, a music educator teaching preschool through fourth grade, instructing fifth-grade students on instruments, and conducting the school band for fourth through eighth graders at Far Hills Country Day School. I also hold roles as the Community Coordinator at Midnight Music and an Elementary Music Consultant at MusicFirst.

Interested in MusicFirst Elementary? Click the link in the description to enjoy a 30-day free trial. https://www.musicfirstelementary.com/

Fourth of July

Today's #techtiptuesday celebrates the Fourth of July. For the past three years, when the school year ended, I would teach in our school’s summer elementary program. When this occurred, I devised weekly lessons around themes. Since the Fourth of July is occurring next week, here is a quick lesson you can use in your future class or your summer music camp.

• Login into your account or free trial and launch Grade 3, Unit 4, Lesson 5.

• Click on the Plan to read through the objectives, social themes, and more.

• Then click on Teach and launch the lesson.

  • The Understanding Music Portion with the warmup of moving to the steady beat, reading and performing rhythm patterns, and warming up the singing voice with melodic patterns are all to a march style.

  • This leads beautifully into the song, which is titled “March of the Third Graders”. This song is a march, which corresponds nicely if you were going to also feature the popular John Phillip Sousa piece, “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

  • Go through the Listen and Respond portion, as these are wonderful higher-order thinking questions, and explore the instrumentation, the style of the march, and similar artists.

  • Grab a recorder, glockenspiel, boomwhackers, or other pitched or non-pitched instruments and perform the Play-Along Activity which encourages performing and music literacy.

  • Finally, if you would like, customize the lesson by adding the Classics For Kids webpage titled “John Philip Sousa About “Stars and Stripes", and the YouTube video with the version that had The Dallas Winds performing the piece with 189 piccolos. Though I am showing how to do this quickly, you can learn how to customize a lesson in my YouTube Video found in the MFE Playlist listed in the description below (https://youtu.be/dx2HMXyzmJw?si=N9So3e8kPqyWjqUj). 

Explore Further!
Visit my YouTube channel for a MusicFirst Elementary Playlist featuring detailed videos, as well as a #techtiptuesday playlist with quick tips and ideas on integrating MusicFirst Elementary into your music class today!