Thank You for sharing Staff Wars. I hope to incorporate this with my students as well!

Thank You for sharing Staff Wars. I hope to incorporate this with my students as well!

This week has been full of concerts for me, so I show a video to the students that are not performing and rehearse with the students that are. I showed HMS Pinafore to my older students who performed in the winter this year and we would pause it to discuss ensemble singing, chorus, duets, historical background, setting, and the plot of the performance. My fourth graders really got into it and were asking lots of questions. I teach in a high poverty community so I thought it was worth it to show them something they may never see in real life.

I teach K-5 currently but I have taught all grade levels

K-1 I am doing a Ace Lesson on beat.
2-3 I am finishing up my lessons while adding in some music singing games.
4-5 History of Rock and Roll

I teach elementary school, so I was wondering what grade you teach, because it may make a difference in what you're looking for. Depending on the class, I do a number of different things on the last few days. If I have a really behaviorally-challenged class, I may pull out a music bingo game like instrument or solfege bingo and have them play it. you can google it and I'll bet there are bingo games online. Bring candy for prizes and play it all day. As long as it teaches a music concept, it's good and it keeps the children focused and calm. For some of my better behaved groups, I might have them play in a drum circle for the last few days or do folk dancing. Videos are good too. Beethoven Lives upstairs, and any of the HBO composer specials are good and you can bring in examples of their music for the kids to listen to or make up a crossword puzzle with music terms for them to fill in. If you have a smartboard, I would play the "staff wars" game on the computer with them. It teaches students the notes of the staff and it's free to download. Just google "staff wars" to find it. It's awesome. It's really a one player game, but I just split the class into teams and have each student run up to the board to answer a question. If you don't have a smartboard, you could put 5 lines of tape on the floor and get a bean bag (or fill a sandwich bag with beans and tape it up real good) and have students toss the bean bag on the staff and guess the note name for points. hope this is helpful. Good luck.

What do you do for your classes the last few days of school?