Reply To: Ending Well

[Crystal Miller]

I taught three levels of elementary music on a weekly basis this past year.  I did year-end testing with the students on the next-to-last week of school, and saved the last week for an End-of-Year Music Party at which all three levels came together, along with moms and some grandparents, and demonstrated things they had practiced and learned in music class this year.  The students had no rehearsal of what they would present, but each class would simply on-the-fly do the activities I called on them to do: scale drills, rhythm reading, rounds or part songs, game songs, demonstrate their knowledge of key signatures, notes and rests, letter names of lines and spaces, sight-singing, etc.  At the end I pulled all three classes together for a couple of music games like “Button You Must Wander,” and then treated everyone to note-shaped sugar cookies and chocolate milk.  It was a fun way to reinforce everything one more time, praise them for all they had learned, and leave them with a good feeling about music class!  (Not to mention opening the parents’ eyes more to the value of teaching music.)