Nine-In-One, Grr! Grr! Elementary Music Lesson

As I look for more ways to incorporate representation for a wide range of cultural perspectives in my music class, I am excited about this new lesson I taught for the first time this school year, using a Hmong story to practice sol-mi and instrument techniques with my 1st graders!

This post contains affiliate links, which do not affect buying experience or the contents of the article. This post is not sponsored.

I actually picked up this book at a used book store while I was on vacation last summer. As soon as I saw it I knew it would be perfect for a music lesson, but as with many things it has taken me over a year to finally sit down to figure out a concrete, meaningful lesson plan to use in my classes. It was worth the wait, though!

The book is Nine-In-One, Grr, Grr! and is a story originally told by Blia Xiong, adapted by Cathy Spagnoli, and illustrated by Nancy Hom. The story is a traditional Hmong story from Laos about why there are so few tigers. If you are not familiar with the story, here it is:

There are 3 main characters in the story: the tiger, the bird, and Shao. When I first read the book to the class, I tell the students to motion with their hands next to their face showing their "claws" every time I say Tiger, flap their "wings" every time I say Bird, and point to their forehead (like they are thinking) every time I say Shao. After reading through the story one time, we quickly discuss what happened in the story.

In the story, the tiger sings a short song ("nine in one, grr, grr") several times. When I read the story, I sing "nine in one" with the melody "sol-sol-mi" while showing the hand signs. After we've read the story and discussed it, I have the students practice singing and signing the song with me and identify the notes in the melody.

Once we've sung it and identified sol and mi, we review how to notate sol and mi on the staff and then I show them how to play it on a xylophone (I have them use G and E). Then I have students work in pairs, and they take turns having one of them sing and sign it while the other plays it. This is the first time they've really played a melody on the barred instruments, so even though it's quite simple it's great practice and the students get so excited!

Now it's time to put the whole story together. I split the class up into 3 groups: one group to sing and sign the song, one to play the song on xylophones, and one to play an instrument for each of the 3 characters: I use gongs for Shao, tubano drums for Tiger, and hand bells for Bird. These are instruments I don't use very often with my 1st graders, so it's a great chance to give them practice using these instruments and review playing technique and instrument names!

We read through the book 3 more times (so each group can take a turn on each part), and the third time I like to take a video of the performance so the class can hear themselves and I can share with their other teachers. It's so easy to put together but it gives the students great practice with some important concepts and it's a perfect opportunity to expose them to a culture most of them have never interacted with before. One nice bonus is actually the biographical information in the back of the book about each of the three contributors, which opens up some great conversations about the refugee experience, Hmong culture, and the importance of cultural preservation (yes, with 1st graders!).

Have you used this story in your classroom before? I had never heard of it until I found it at the bookstore and I love it! If you have more ideas for using this book in music class I'd love to hear your ideas in the comments below. If you're looking for more ways to bring children's literature into your elementary music lessons, you can find tons more lesson ideas here:

Read more "Nine-In-One, Grr! Grr! Elementary Music Lesson"

August Favorites 2019

August certainly zoomed by! Summer vacation is officially over and with a week of the new school year under our belts, our family is getting settled back into a routine. As I do each month, today I'm looking back on some of my highlights from the past month, including things from home and school, with photos from my Instagram account, as well as articles from other music education bloggers I found this month and shared on my Facebook page.

1. Xylophone Mallet Hack

I saw this idea in a music teacher Facebook group and my mind was blown- I attached these pen holders to the sides of all my barred instruments and now the appropriate mallets for each instrument are stored directly on the coordinating instruments themselves! This is going to save me so much time when I'm setting up for the whole class to play an ensemble piece, and it makes it so much easier when students are independently getting out an individual instrument to use for composition! It certainly wasn't cheap to outfit my entire instrumentarium with these, but it was worth it for me.

2. Family Vacation

To be perfectly honest, we didn't do a whole lot of actual "vacationing" this summer- we mostly stayed in the area, practicing riding bicycles with no training wheels and swimming without floaties, working on school stuff here and there, and relaxing. But this month we did manage to get away for a week with my extended family at a lake house we rented, and it was so much fun! I loved spending time with my niece and nephew and the rest of my family, and it was so fun to see my daughters having so much fun swimming in the lake.

3. Back to School

We just finished our first week of classes, and it really is great to be back! I loved wearing my new music dress from Modcloth for the first day of school too ;) Somehow every year I feel like I love my job more and more- elementary music really is my passion, and I'm so grateful to be able to do something I love this much and get paid for it!

4. Music Education Blog Posts

What were your highlights from the month of August? I know this month is always pretty crazy, at least in the US, with back to school season in full swing! I'd love to hear about your favorite moments in the comments below, or come find me on social media and leave me a message!

Read more "August Favorites 2019"

Another: Elementary Music Lesson

I recently came across a wonderful new book that I'm so excited to use in my music classes this year: Another by Christian Robinson. I'm planning to use the book to talk about different sound sources, timbre, and communicating meaning through music with my Kindergarten classes. Here is the lesson plan I've come up with for this adorable book!

This post contains affiliate links, which do not affect buying experience or the contents of the article. This article is not sponsored.

If you aren't familiar with the story, this book is a picture book with no words at all. This video gives a sense of what it's like:

First, I'll show my students the entire book. As we look at each page, I'll invite students to share what they notice, and what they think is happening. At the end of the story, we'll discuss what the basic story line was.

Next we'll go through the book again, but I'll tell students we're going to add "sound effects" without using any words. On each page we'll practice making different sounds that I or the students suggest would fit with the page, whether it's the cat meowing, or the sound of the girl sliding through the ball pit. Children at this age love showing off the different sounds they can make with their mouths, so I'm sure they will have even better ideas than I do! This is a great place to have conversations about how loud, how fast, how high etc the sound should be to best communicate what's happening.

Once we've done that, I'll tell students that we're going to add sound effects to the story again, but this time using instrument sounds. I'll assign students to different pages- many of the pages only need one sound by one person, but some of them would probably need a larger group- and tell them when it's their turn they will make a sound to match the picture using only instruments.

I've found with this type of lesson it's easiest to sit close to the instruments, either by putting all of the instruments I want them to use out on the floor in front of the class or by moving to go sit near the shelves where I keep the instruments. Then students can quickly get the instrument they want, play it, and sit back down when it's their turn. Before we go through the story, I always take the opportunity to review classroom instrument names and playing techniques too.

By the end, my Kindergartners will have created their own soundscape from the book- this is a great introduction to the idea of communicating a story, mood, or scene through sound. If you want to see more ideas for incorporating lots of different types of soundscapes into lessons for a wide range of ages, this post has lots of other ideas:

And if you want to see all of my lessons using children's books, I have all of them collected in this post:

Have you ever heard of this book before? I am so thrilled to be adding it to my classroom this year! If you have more ideas for ways to use it in the music room, I'd love to hear them in the comments below!

Read more "Another: Elementary Music Lesson"

Wrist Bands: Individual Behavior Supports for Music Class

With so many students to teach and so little time with each class, managing to give each student the kind of individual support we'd like to is a monumental task! And often when individual students are struggling in school, music teachers are left out of any individual plans that are created for them. I've found a few strategies in the last few years that have been very helpful for students who need individualized support that are realistic for me to implement as a music teacher. I hope they will be helpful for others as well. One strategy that has been helpful for targeting one specific behavior goal for individual students has been the rubber band method. I've since learned that this strategy is fairly well-known within some circles, but it was new to me when the school psychologist shared it with me a few years ago and it has been very effective for some situations!

I have used this strategy as a way to give a student a silent reminder when they are working to reduce the frequency of a specific targeted behavior. That could be roaming the room when it's not appropriate to do so, calling out/ interrupting, name-calling, throwing, or any other behavior that the student exhibits frequently within a class period.

The basic idea is simple: I start with a certain number of rubber bands on one wrist. Any time the student exhibits the targeted behavior, I silently move a rubber band from one wrist to the other. The goal is for there to be at least 1 band left on the first arm when the class period is over. Once the student starts to adjust their behavior and is consistently successful, I can reduce the number of bands that I have to start with.

This strategy works within the context of my job as an elementary music teacher because I can just put the bands on my arm in the morning whenever I know I have that student in class that day, and if I happen to need it for more than one student within the building I can use the same bands and just replace them after each class leaves. I don't have to create a new individual chart for them, and I don't have to set something up for that student that stays out in the room somewhere (like many homeroom teachers might do with a visual on their desk etc).

The rubber band strategy works in general because it doesn't draw attention to the behavior- for the other students in the class, who generally don't even notice me moving bands so it doesn't create any sense of shame for the student, or for the individual student, for whom it avoids giving any sort of positive reinforcement for the behavior but still gives them the reminders that they need. It also works because it's very concrete, and it allows us to work with realistic goals- we aren't expecting a behavior to immediately disappear, but to help students be more aware and gradually correct it over time. And it helps me keep track of data without having to stop to write things down, which is never convenient, and often it helps me see the student making progress more easily- it can be hard to remain patient when a student's progress is slow, but it's easier to notice that gradual progress happen when I notice I only have to move 3 bands instead of 5, etc.

When I have used this I have done it in tandem with an individual behavior plan that the support team creates for the student for their overall school time, so I fill out their chart, give them a sticker, check off a list, or whatever they are using outside of my room based on how they did with the rubber bands in my class. It saves me some of the headache of trying to remember lots of different individual plans while I'm in the middle of teaching, while still working with whatever they are doing in the rest of their classes with other teachers.

I hope this helps you find manageable ways to support students in their behavior goals! I'm planning to share more of my favorite strategies for individual behavior supports in the future. What are some tools that you use in your own teaching practice? I'd love to hear more ideas in the comments below! And if you want to learn about how I build a classroom community and foster positive character in my music classes you can read about all of my procedures and strategies in this post.

Read more "Wrist Bands: Individual Behavior Supports for Music Class"