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MUSIC MEDLEY Introducing Students to Composers By Dorothy Kittaka and Linda White S Among the resources available to music teachers are The Composer Special Series of films (far left), Plank's Music K-8 magazine (top left), and Liberty for All: A Musical Journey, a CD tying music to historical events. ome weeks after I'd taught a unit about Verdi and opera, a fourth grader returned to my classroom with this announcement: "We were watching Jeopardy!, and I was the only one who knew the answer about Verdi." While my goal wasn't to prepare a generation of Jeopardy! winners, I was happy that the lessons about Giuseppe Verdi had made an impression upon her. Introducing students to composers can be an exciting way for students to connect to musicians, music genres, culture, and eras. Making the learning applicable and relevant to the lives of the students involved is yet another challenge. In this Music Medley column, we will give you some hints, tried & true lessons, and resources for teaching about composers. We hope as you read and use some of these ideas, you will email us with additional ideas of your own that we might incorporate in future columns. Project based studies will allow for differentiation and personal choice. Listed below are several projects that you might try with your students: • Produce a Jeopardy! game with students contributing questions and answers about a composer and his/her work (country of origin, life, compositions, world events in his/her lifetime) • Create composer puppets and have a theatre with mini-dramas to share with other classes • Build dioramas which show the culture/times of a composer with his/her family and share with the class (afterwards these could be put in a showcase in the hallway) • Bring a composer radio show into the classroom where students "interview" a composer and review one composition that will be played on the show • Assemble a poster for each composer grouping them for a gallery showing by either genre or era (include pertinent information about the composer) • Generate a PowerPoint presentation about a composer with background music of that composer • Fashion postcards from a composer's travels or life (i.e. Tchaikovsky writing to someone from his trip to America; Mozart on his travels as a child; Aaron Copland as he works on the music for Martha Graham's ballet) • Film a video about the composer or his/her music where students research and write the script; reenact a life scene with appropriate costumes, wigs, etc. MEDLEY continued on page 4 Fort Wayne Classrooms Foster Communal Compositions F Fort Wayne schoolchildren compose music on classroom computers. AME, Foundation for Art and Music in Education, is a non-profit organization that was co-founded by music specialist Dorothy Kittaka and art specialist Mike Schmid in 1978 to foster and perpetuate creativity through multicultural arts education. One of their seven arts programs is FAME's Composition Project, in collaboration with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic and the Fort Wayne Ballet Youth Company. This year the cultural focus is Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Saint Pierre and Miquleon. Selected fourth-grade students will learn to compose with noted composer David Crowe. Crowe will produce an original score inspired by the cultural focus to be premiered by the Fort Wayne Philharmonic. The Fort Wayne Ballet Youth Company will CLICK FOR MORE perform with the piece For more information, visit at the Fort Wayne famearts.org Festival on March 13. sai-national.org WINTER 2011 PAN PIPES 3

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