One of my favorite holiday pieces is “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24” by Savatage / Trans-Siberian Orchestra (1995). It is a combination of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” played in the beginning of the song by a solo cello, and then in a round with a flute and guitar. The next part picks up the tempo and is the melody of “Carol of the Bells” or “Shchedryk”, the Ukrainian New Year’s song by Mykola Leontovych, written in 1916. I recently arranged this piece for my school’s Philharmonic, which consists of students in grades 4-8 who play strings, brass, woodwinds, and piano. They had a wonderful time learning to play and perform the song, and it inspired me to create this play-along video. For this video, I edited the song and slowed down the tempo so that it could be successfully performed by elementary and middle school students.
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This is the body percussion play-along that accompanied the original rhythm play-along video with the fall and thankful theme. There is a mashup of the snippets from the following songs: We Are Family by Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers, Performed by Sister Sledge; Vince Guaraldi Trio - Thanksgiving Theme; Home by Drew Pearson and Greg Holden, Performed by Phillip Phillips; Kind and Generous by Natalie Merchant; and Count on Me by Bruno Mars. The body percussion concepts performed coordinate with triple and duple meters, quarter rest, quarter, eighth, half, and whole notes.
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Two years ago, I created a rhythm play-along and later added a body percussion activity. Due to the varying meters, rhythms, and tempos, I suggest trying it personally before using it in class. This rhythm play-along emphasizes gratitude with a fall theme, incorporating snippets from songs about thankfulness and appreciation.
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In the past, I researched Canva's AI tools and had it rewrite the song, Five Little Pumpkins, and turn it into a whimsical tale. It was amusing, to say the least. I had fun using Canva to illustrate and record that tale. Most of this video was produced in Canva, with the recording of the song done in Soundtrap, and the final edits to put the three videos together in Final Cut Pro.
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Though this is not one of my popular rhythm play-along videos, I have to say that it is one of my favorite ones. This is a Halloween-inspired rhythm play-along video with all live, instrumental selections. Taking five familiar live instrumental selections played often around Halloween time, this is a medley rhythm play-along intended for older elementary and middle school music classes. This is one of many play-along videos for the fall. Click like and subscribe, check out other play-along videos, and if you like my resources, please consider donating me a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech
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Get ready to rock with this boomwhacker play-along for older elementary students, featuring the fun tune "I Want Candy" by Berns, Feldman, Goldstein, and Gottehrer, performed by Kidz Bop. This is a perfect jam to bring out during the Halloween season, as it's all about sweet treats and no mention of spooky stuff.
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This rhythm play-along medley consists of four popular songs for higher elementary moving up days. The rhythm patterns covered are syncopation, quarter, eighth, whole, dotted quarter, and sixteenth notes, as well as quarter rests.
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Are you looking to spice up your elementary music class and engage your students more effectively? Have you ever considered integrating technology into your teaching methods? If not, then let me introduce you to Canva, an easy-to-use graphic design tool that can revolutionize your teaching approach. In this blog post and video, we will explore five exciting ways to use Canva for your elementary music class.
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Have you checked out MusicFirst Elementary Powered by Charanga? Check it out here!
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Level up from ChatGPT and try some of these AI tools specifically created for educators! This blog/episode focuses on three AI tools that educators can use to save them a lot of time and energy. Like my resources? Please consider buying me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech
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Have you ever needed a one-stop shop of audio, video, image, doc, and converter tools that is web-based, free? Take a look at 123.apps.com!
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It's Day #4 of my week of #techtips for #music #education, especially #elementarymusicteacherlife! Today's tech tips show some fun presenter tools in Canva that can intuitively be used in the music classroom. Check back for more tech tips this week!
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Tech Tip #3: Two Sites to Create Musical Dice and Stories
Check out this post to find ways to help your students improvise music and read and perform rhythm patterns!
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Many elementary music educators are in the midst of summer break or holiday break, which means relaxing, taking time for themselves, spending time with families, and exploring some new materials and professional development for their return to the school year. I thought I would join in this by having a "Week of Tech Tips!” Check back daily with me this week as my YouTube channel and blog posts will reflect on tech tips for music educators.
Tech Tip Day 1: 🎥 Join Music Educator Amy Burns in a Fun 5-Minute Tour of the MusicFirst Elementary Kindergarten Curriculum! 🎶
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Last month, I was thrilled to be able to present at the ISTE Live23 Conference in Philadelphia, PA. I presented a poster session titled “Making Elementary Cross-Curricular Connections Intuitively With Book Creator”. It was a 90-minute session that explored the following:
“Elementary special subject areas like music, STEAM, and more have numerous cross-curricular connections. However, showcasing those connections to administrators and parents can be challenging. Book Creator gives educators ways to achieve cross-curricular connections and allows students to use multiple modalities to showcase their work.”
Check out the webinar and the blog post. Like my resources? Please consider buying me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech.
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Throughout the 21-22 school year, I created many “mashup” or medley play-along videos featuring seasonal pop and rock songs. This summer, I made it a goal to create play-along videos and lessons for songs inspired by the Kodály and Orff Schulwerk approaches. This one is for Doggie, Doggie.
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This is another attempt at creating a play-along with floating notation and boomwhacker colors. This is a recording by The United States Army Field Band. Resources are included below along with a link to the original video. Like my resources? Please consider buying me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech.
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Canva’s “Brand New Era” was launched this past week. If you noticed, Canva had ten gift-wrapped boxes that when you unwrapped them, showed you some new tools and fun tutorials for you to use to explore those tools. As I worked my way through the tutorials, I realized that many of these will be useful in our music classrooms. Here are some ways to use these new items. Check out the blog and webinar video to see some examples and ideas on how to use these new features in the music classroom.
To check out more, read Canva’s blog here or check out a deep dive here when they launched it this week.
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The other day, a friend of mine asked how to create individual slides from a series of images. I knew how to do this in Keynote, but I was not sure how to accomplish this in Powerpoint or Google Slides. Turns out that all of the programs can do this. In this video, I will show how to do this with Google Slides and Keynote. There is also an additional video shared from YouTube showing how to do this in PowerPoint.
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March Music Madness with a creative focus using Chrome Music Lab Song Maker. Read through the post or watch the YouTube video to see how to use or adapt this for an elementary music class across grade levels. Like my resources? Please consider buying me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech
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