Free On-Line Music Learning!

The Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO) has entered into a unique partnership with the French web-based music-learning platform, Meludia. Starting on December 6, 2017 and for a period of one year, unlimited access to the Meludia web platform of 625 interactive music learning exercises will be made available free of charge to every resident and visitor in Canada, a gift to the nation by the CPO and its Music Director, Rune Bergmann, who have made it their mission to encourage and nurture music literacy in Canada.

 

Starting today, anyone with a Canadian IP address can log into meludia.com and enter the program free of charge until December 5, 2018. Canadians will benefit from the fun and interactive learning exercises offered on the platform!

For more information, please visit http://calgaryphil.com/meludia/ .

Grade Three Choir Practice Videos

Our Grade Three Winter Choir's Community Tour is just around the corner!  

On Tuesday, December 19th, we will be visiting Robert Thirsk High School and the Crowfoot Library to sing some festive holiday music.  We want to share our best work with our neighbors, so I've posted videos of each of our songs so you can practice, practice, practice!  


Merry Christmas - almost !

Click HERE to practice
We Wish You a Merry Christmas!

Click HERE to practice
He'll Be Coming Down the Chimney When He Comes!

Click HERE to practice Rudolf

Click HERE to practice The Twelve Days of Christmas

Click HERE to practice North Pole Elf

Click HERE to practice Jingle Bell Rock

Click HERE to practice Jingle Bells

Click HERE to practice Frosty the Snowman

Click HERE to practice
All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth

Grade Three Winter Choir

Royal Oak School is excited to offer our Grade Three Students an opportunity to participate in our Winter Choir!  We will meet over the lunch hour (12:06 – 12:36) on Mondays and Wednesdays from November 22^th – December 18^th.

During this time, we will prepare seasonal music to perform in the community on December 19^th.  We will be singing in two venues:

            - Robert Thirsk High School, and

            - Crowfoot Branch of the Calgary Public Library

To ensure our final performance is as strong as possible, students are required to attend all rehearsals. If your child would like to commit to this club, please sign and return the form that was distributed today by Thursday, November 21^st. 

I look forward to sharing this experience with your child!  If you have any questions, please contact me through the school.

Mrs. Mann

Remembrance Assemby Practice Video

This month, the Grade Three students have been given the solemn responsibility to perform a piece of music at the Remembrance Assembly on November 10th. It will be a token of respect to the soldiers who have served this country and a commitment to bring peace and compassion to our community. The students have been working very hard to make their piece as strong as it can be, and I am very proud of them for taking this work so seriously.

Please click on the link below to practice "Today I’m Going to Try and Change the World" (written by Johnny Reid).

Click HERE to practice the Remembrance Day Song.

Are you controlling my mind, Mr. Composer?

Music is powerful!  It can stir up strong emotions, making us feel peaceful or excited or sad or silly.  This week students have discovered that these feelings do not happen by accident.  In reality, composers use special tricks to control our feelings and responses to their music.  They tell the performers how loud to play, how fast to play and even how to shape each note, all in the hopes of creating a specific mood for their piece.

Click HERE to listen to "Fossils".

Students in Grade Three read the book, "The Drumheller Dinosaur Dance" which imagines what it might sound like if the fossilized skeletons of dinosaurs reassembled for a dance party.  Then we listened to a piece called "Fossils" by Camille Saint-Saens while moving our bodies like the dancing bones.  Very exciting!  But after all this fun, we stepped back and considered how this music made us feel and what tricks the composer used to make us feel that way.  

Listen to the music by clicking on the link to the right, and then see if you can figure out how the composer controlled your mind.  Don't forget to use the musical terminology below to justify your response!

	Musical Terminology	Means  . . .
How fast is the music?	largo	slow
	moderato	medium speed
	presto	fast
How loud is the music?	forte	loud
	piano	quiet
How do you play the music?	legato	smooth and      connected
	marcato	choppy

High and Low Melodies in Many Forms

Improvising melodies with the
Singing Puppies. 

Every person is unique.  Whether you are learning how to kick a ball, add numbers, tell a story or sing a song, every person learns in different ways and at different speeds. Every individual brings their own learning style and different background knowledge, so it is important that we explore new concepts in many different ways.



For example, Grade One students have been been learning how to recognize and manipulate high and low sounds through a variety of activities.  If you had peeked into the music class room in the last few weeks, you might have seen singing, stories, movement, reading and writing music - and puppets of course!  


In the course of our learning, students have:

Labelling high and low notes on
an illustration of the story of
Tic and Toc.

     - echoed teacher melodies
     - moved their hands and bodies to show high and low pitches
     - sung a given melody to respond to a sung question
     - used a puppet to improvise their own melody
     - used a xylophone to represent moving "up and down" a hill in a story
     - drawn high and low notes on a picture
     - finding high and low pitches on a one-line staff

Composing melodies on a 

one-line staff.

After all this experience, the next step for Grade One is to use the formal melodic notation of the one-line staff to write and share their own melodies.  What a powerful experience to create and write down a melody, and then hear it performed by a friend!  

Listen with Your Whole Body

Music just makes a person want to move!  We have all felt that twitch when we hear a catchy tune, and suddenly our chin begins to bob a little and our fingers start drumming along.

Click HERE to listen to Semper Fidelis.

One way we can respond to a song is to mark the beat, which is the steady pulse in music.  A piece may have a fast beat or a slow beat, but it is always, always steady.  Grade Two and Three students have been performing the beat of J.P Sousa's Semper Fidelis.  Click on the image to the right to listen again and create your own beat pattern!

Click HERE to listen to The Royal March of the Lions.

We also respond to the mood of a piece, showing how a piece makes us feel deep in our hearts.  Music can inspire powerful emotions, but each person's reaction is unique.  It says as much about the song as it does about the person who is listening to it.  To one person's ears a piece of music can be peaceful, while it makes another person feel sad.  Our bodies can reflect these deep personal feelings and reflect the story that the music is telling.  Grade One students have been exploring C. Saint-Saens' The Royal March of the Lions.  Click on the image to the right to listen again and express your inner lion!

Drum Stories

Ready to play the letter C.

On our fourth day of drumming, we learned the last letter of the week. 

To play the letter C, we lay our weak arm across the head of the drum and play the edge of the drum with our strong hand.

Then we combined all of our letters into new sentences and used these sentences to build our own drum story. Each class’s story is unique, with it’s own beginning, middle and end.

It’s been a lot of work, but we can’t wait to share our work with our families tomorrow!    

You are invited to attend your child(ren)'s class on Friday September 15th.  The schedule for the day is:

Time	Grade	Teacher
9:10	3	Ms. Libbey
9:30	3	Mr. Duggan
9:50	3	Ms. Bennett
10:10	3	Ms. Rutland
10:30	3	Ms. Sticksl
10:50	3	Ms. Craig
11:10	2	Ms. Devereux
11:30	2	Ms. Vogan
11:50	2	Ms. McDonald
12:10	2	Mr. Sandburg
12:30	2	Ms. Lagrana