#I AM A DREAM
The focus idea for the past month has been “I am a Dream” for the Kindergarten and 1st Grade General music classes. The first objective was to define and accumulate and understanding on what life dreams/pursuits are. Afterwards, we openly discussed what some of their pursuits where or what they possibly wanted to be when they grow up. We used these foundational lessons to create musically those expressions and pursuits.
I created a template and allowed them to share corporately in the process of creating melodies and lyrics as we created. I’ve always, from day 1, made sure they were learning formal musical terms such as “lyrics” etc… I’d like to highlight that Songwriting enhances vocabulary usage, for its an exercise of creating words, sentences, and sometimes ideas metaphorically so it yet included a form of general education.
The greatest element (maybe) to this project was the introduction to digital technology. We recorded on a program called “LOGIC PRO” from my MAC BOOK. This is one of the software programs that the BIGGEST music industry professionals use… Some of them were able to engineer the recording sessions with my assistance…Everyone was able to sing and/or engineer on the project…. We merged even a bit of Theatre/Drama in the project… I explained to them we had to reenact the lyrics to the song as we recorded footage/pics…..
I’m presently using this focus idea for the 2nd/3rd grade keyboarding classes to do something similar….
I truly believe this video will be a lifelong memory that they will all cherish, they were so excited to see/hear themselves…. All the work we put towards it, they were astounded that it materialized……. Even the teachers were excited to make contributions creatively to the project….. #I AM A DREAM
-Mr. Paul Claxton