Saturday, March 8, 2008

First Sessions: Burroughs

Yes, I was late for my first meeting at Burroughs Community School (yucky snow and traffic) but the students made good use of the first few minutes learning the Mexican National Anthem to add to their repertoire. Music teacher Pete Hoffman gives them plenty of great vocal and solfege skills so this group is going to be musically quite savvy. With Mr. Hoffman and Janel McGreavy we have great resources and made fast progress.




The students haven't done much with instruments together as a group so after some warm up exercises we had everyone play Stamping Tubes: First in quintets with two per player, then as a vast throng, one each but separated in two groups far apart. This got some good call and response things happening and brought out the rapid organizational thinking among the players.

Burroughs doesn't have the facility of a woodshop with tools so the focus of the process will be a little different from that of Webster; we will still make and decorate some of the portable instruments though, and voice and movement may take on a larger role.

Next time we'll start generating some story texts, and singing and acting them out.






No comments: