Music and books: all together now - includes related article - Reach Every Child - Teach With Music

Instructor, March, 1994 by Donna Levene

Promote cooperation and cultural pride with great books that entice kids to sing along!

Picture a stadium full of cheering fans singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" or a family car resounding with a round of "Three Blind Mice." These scenes evoke togetherness and pride--both of which you strive to nurture in your classroom. Now you can put music to work toward those goals with a host of recent books that celebrate children's songs.

* Personal Favorites

Start off by choosing some of your favorite childhood songs to share with your students, then ask them to do the same. Let students write down and illustrate verses.

* Folk Songs for Shared Heritage

If you want to expand your repertoire, Gonna Sing My Head Off! American Folk Songs for Children collected and arranged by Kathleen Krull (Knopf) has a selection of 62 well-known folk songs. Or you can use some of the wonderful picture books that illustrate song lyrics. The Cat Came Back, illustrated by Bill Slavin (Whitman), She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain by Kathleen Bullock (Simon & Schuster), Skip to My Lou and There's a Hole in the Bucket, both adapted by Nadine Bernard Westcott (Little, Brown), are excellent examples of folk songs in picture-book format.

* Active Singing

For play songs that include games and actions, try Shake It to the One You Love the Best: Play Songs and Lullabies from Black Musical Traditions collected and adapted by Cheryl Warren Maddox (Warren Maddox Productions). Fiddle-I-Fee: A Farmyard Song for the Very Young adapted and illustrated by Melissa Sweet (Little, Brown) and Today is Monday, illustrated by Eric Carle, are cumulative songs in picture books especially suitable for primary grades.

* Enchanting Chants

If singing isn't your strong suit, memorize a collection of rhythmic poems for your students to snap their fingers or clap to while chanting. Shimmy Shake Earthquake: Don't Forget to Dance Poems collected by Cynthia Jabar (Little, Brown) contains poems that call out for clapping and moving. Miss Mary Mack and Other Children's Street Rhymes compiled by Joanna Cole and Stephanie Calmenson (Morrow Junior Books) is a collection of hand-clapping, ball-bouncing rhymes that your students may already use in playground games.

* A Chorus of Voices

All Join In by Quentin Blake is a collection of poems that clamor for choral reading. The selection "Sorting Out the Kitchen Pans" can be performed with a pots-and-pans band. Nancy Van Laan's rhythmic picture book Possum Come A-Knockin has a refrain and individual parts that can be assigned for readers' theater. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr., and John Archambault (Simon and Schuster) is an infectious rhyming alphabet book. Pairs of students can learn the alphabet lines while a chorus jazzes up the refrains.

* A Family Affair

Music can also help validate each child's family musical heritage. Lullabies, holiday songs, and even tunes sung on car trips are an integral part of many families' traditions. Ask kids to share special family songs; families can even make tapes for the class. Have each child transcribe the words of his or her family's songs as a language enrichment activity.

In Music, Music for Everyone by Vera Williams (Greenwillow), family and friends form a band to perform at a neighborhood gathering. For another touching look at family music, try Grandpa's Song by Tony Johnston (Dial). As Grandpa starts to lose his memory, his grandchildren teach him the songs he had taught them. IT'S A MULTIDISCIPLINARY MUSIC BOX

How one teacher mixes music into the curriculum with help from his classroom computer

What do levers have to do with music? They're just one way Wayne Bacer and his sixth-grade students integrate music with the curriculum at Pepper Tree Elementary School in Upland, California. Wayne, a free-time musician who also operates a recording studio, believes that music belongs in the classroom. "Music is part of people's culture," he says. "It's part of the way people express themselves." With technology like the CD-ROM Microsoft Musical Instruments, Wayne says integrating music into the curriculum is "a piece of cake."

Sounds Around the World

More than 200 instruments are represented in Microsoft Musical Instruments, including the didjeridu, an aboriginal instrument from Australia. In addition to navigating a world map to investigate instruments of different regions, Wayne's students can hear and play more than 1,500 sound samples; listen to professional musicians play; explore related history articles; and view photographs of instruments and ensembles.

Musical Roots

"Who am I? Where did I come from?" Wayne always starts off the year by having students investigate their heritage. They use Microsoft Musical Instruments to add a tuneful touch to their oral presentations. And the program spices up written reports as well. "Students can copy any screen into a word-processing program," Wayne says. They then use the photos and illustrations to enhance their reports.

About Those Levers...