Anyone looking for an easily accessible music appreciation course for kids should investigate The Classic Composers series from International Masters Publishers. It's a Time-Life send-you-one-disc-of-our-choosing-every-three-weeks kind of a deal. I got a sample disc (Mozart) in the mail yesterday. I usually just throw those things in the trash, but this had an actual CD in it, so I checked it out. It's pretty cool, actually. Each CD comes with a 24-page booklet detailing the composer's bio, a "turning point" in his life, "life and times," "In [historical Context," a listener's guide, the composer's influences and ends with a 20 question quiz (answers provided).
The CD itself comes with ~60 minutes of the composers "greatest hits." The Mozart CD includes the overture to the Marriage of Figaro, the Clarinet Concerto in B Flat Major, the Piano Concerto No. 21 "Elvira Madigan", "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik," the first movement of the "Sinfonia Concertante" (my favorite) and some others, recorded by well-known ensembles. Clearly none of this is in depth information--more of a taste--but from the sample and what I can tell from the promotional literature they sent, it's enough to introduce kids to classical music without overwhelming them.
Yes, they send a junky free gift with your order. "Buy as many as you want, cancel anytime." We decided to get a couple and see if they're all as useful as the Mozart cd is.
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Thursday, December 14, 2006
What's Opera, Doc?
I love the internet. The boys have been playing World of Warcraft--a lot--and they keep talking about magic helmets. Which in turn makes DH and I sign the "Spear and Magic Helmet" recitative from the Bugs Bunny cartoon "What's Opera, Doc?" The boys thought we were insane (not for the first time, mind you) until I found the cartoon on Google video this morning. LOL
Click the title to watch.
Click the title to watch.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Give This to Every Teacher You Know
Fantastic article on the NAGC website: The Dos and Don'ts of Instruction: What It Means To Teach Gifted Learners Well by Carol Ann Tomlinson, Ed. D, at the University of Virginia. My favorite part is this:
"6) Instruction for gifted learners is inappropriate when it is rooted in novel, "enriching" or piecemeal learning experiences. If a child were a very talented pianist, we would question the quality of her music teacher if the child regularly made toy pianos, read stories about peculiar happenings in the music world, and did word-search puzzles on the names of musicians. Rather, we would expect the student to work directly with the theory and performance of music in a variety of forms and at consistently escalating levels of complexity. We would expect the young pianist to be learning how a musician thinks and works, and to be developing a clear sense of her own movement toward expert-level performance in piano. Completing word-search puzzles, building musical instruments and reading about oddities in the lives of composers may be novel, may be "enriching,"(and certainly seems lacking in coherent scope and sequence, and therefore sounds piecemeal). But those things will not foster high-level talent development in music. The same hold true for math, history, science, and so on."
This really struck a chord (pardon the pun) with me because Wolfie is taking a "gifted" Medieval Studies course right now and they want him to do "fun" things like "Make your own coat of arms" and "Draw and label the parts of a Viking longboat." Is he tested on any of these things? No, because there's a list of 5-10 and he's supposed to pick two. The school doesn't even want to see the projects. I have a hard time requiring him to do them since they're not graded and not "fun."
Don't get me wrong. Some of the projects are fun and some hands-on stuff cements learning and understanding. But boy, do I have a hard time forcing the boys to do things like extraneous science "activities", that are neither fun nor educational at their core. I've been guilty of this, too, both as a teacher and as a parent. Just because I think it would be fun to write a diary as a literary or historical figure, that doesn't mean everyone in my class will. Hopefully, by passing this article around, other teachers will realize the difference between gifted education and gifted filling-up-time, too.
"6) Instruction for gifted learners is inappropriate when it is rooted in novel, "enriching" or piecemeal learning experiences. If a child were a very talented pianist, we would question the quality of her music teacher if the child regularly made toy pianos, read stories about peculiar happenings in the music world, and did word-search puzzles on the names of musicians. Rather, we would expect the student to work directly with the theory and performance of music in a variety of forms and at consistently escalating levels of complexity. We would expect the young pianist to be learning how a musician thinks and works, and to be developing a clear sense of her own movement toward expert-level performance in piano. Completing word-search puzzles, building musical instruments and reading about oddities in the lives of composers may be novel, may be "enriching,"(and certainly seems lacking in coherent scope and sequence, and therefore sounds piecemeal). But those things will not foster high-level talent development in music. The same hold true for math, history, science, and so on."
This really struck a chord (pardon the pun) with me because Wolfie is taking a "gifted" Medieval Studies course right now and they want him to do "fun" things like "Make your own coat of arms" and "Draw and label the parts of a Viking longboat." Is he tested on any of these things? No, because there's a list of 5-10 and he's supposed to pick two. The school doesn't even want to see the projects. I have a hard time requiring him to do them since they're not graded and not "fun."
Don't get me wrong. Some of the projects are fun and some hands-on stuff cements learning and understanding. But boy, do I have a hard time forcing the boys to do things like extraneous science "activities", that are neither fun nor educational at their core. I've been guilty of this, too, both as a teacher and as a parent. Just because I think it would be fun to write a diary as a literary or historical figure, that doesn't mean everyone in my class will. Hopefully, by passing this article around, other teachers will realize the difference between gifted education and gifted filling-up-time, too.
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