Amy M. Burns

Elementary Music Technology and Integration

Amy M. Burns has taught PreK-grade 4 general music for over 25 years at Far Hills Country Day School (FH) (https://www.fhcds.org/). She also teaches grade 5 instrument class, directs the FH Philharmonic, is the Performing Arts Department Manager, and teaches privately in the after-school conservatory after being the director for over 20 years. She has authored four books and numerous articles on how to integrate tech into the elementary music classroom. She has presented many sessions on the topic, including four keynote addresses in TX, IN, St. Maarten, and AU. She is the recipient of the 2005 Technology in Music Education (TI:ME) Teacher of the Year, the 2016 New Jersey Music Educators Association (NJMEA) Master Music Teacher, the 2016 Governor’s Leader in Arts Education, and the 2017 NJ Nonpublic School Teacher of the Year Awards. Her most recent publication, Using Technology with Elementary Music Approaches (2020), published by Oxford University Press (OUP) is available from OUP and Amazon. Burns is also the Community Coordinator for Midnight Music (MMC) at https://midnightmusic.com/, the General Music Chair for NJMEA Board of Directors, and the Elementary Music Consultant for MusicFirst (https://www.musicfirst.com/), a company built by music educators for music educators, dedicated to helping music teachers and their students make the most of technology in the classroom.

PreK Unit: Carnival of the Animals

January 28, 2022  /  Amy M. Burns

In the spring, the PreK music classes prepare for a Grandparents’ Day Concert. This concert will feature a cross-curricular theme such as songs about numbers, or books, or around the world. Once the concert is completed, I introduce Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals. To experience this great piece of music, the students move as each animal, sometimes using props such as scarves and ribbon scarves, or instruments such as rhythm sticks. To further the study, we utilize the app, The Saint-Saens Carnival of the Animals (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/saint-saens-carnival-animals/id475653515?mt=8 for $3.99), and the students will watch, listen, and interact with the app as they color pictures from the piece of music. The app has some wonderful interactions from connecting the dots to create a lion, to watching the orchestra perform each piece, to seeing the cartoon birds land on the instrumentalists, to watching the tortoise spin on his shell as he watches the orchestra. The coloring book and story pictures are a free printable download from The Wise Owl Factory and can be found here: http://thewiseowlfactory.com/BookaDay/archives/8401

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