A Musical Prompt: Postcards From the Concert

I am a music junkie so I absolutely loved this lesson! The first tweak I made was that I prefer to use Beethoven's Thunderstorm piece from Symphony # 6. After listening to the song, the students create and combine descriptive sentences about thunderstorms.

On day two, I downloaded a video of a symphony orchestra playing this piece from YouTube (using clipconverter) and printed concert tickets on card stock that I distributed to my kids. Then, I turned off the light and they watched a youth symphony perform Beethoven's thunderstorm piece. I also had my students create their postcard on paper before making a digital one because the lesson was on Tuesday and our computer lab time is on Thursday.

On Wednesday, I used the enrichment activity of choosing a song that related to the rainforest because our textbook story from that week had talked about the rainforest. I used clipconverter to get a track of rainforest sounds off of YouTube and dragged it into GarageBand on my Mac. I also dragged a song called "Mission Theme" from the movie "The Mission" where a man goes to live with a tribe of natives in the Amazon rainforest. I melded the two tracks together and played it for my kids, letting them repeat the lesson from day 1 of writing and combining descriptive sentences about the rainforest. Thanks for the great lesson!