My school is a K-8 International Baccalaureate magnet program in a large, urban district. All students have music twice a week and they love to sing, dance, move, play, and create.
Our music classes integrate with other subject areas such as math, science, social studies, and language arts.
Rhythm and pitch go hand-in-hand with math and science. Music from around the world teaches us about culture through social studies. Lyrics and music-reading involve us with literacy and language arts.
I always look forward to my music classes because my young musicians are smart, curious, funny, eager, and so loving! Our student community is diverse in its academic, racial, economic, social, and emotional make-up.
The universal language of music brings us all together.
It is the great equalizer. On the other hand, our diversity is celebrated and brings different cultural strengths to our music-making.
My Project
This project will provide my student musicians with some great new instruments so that we can continue to have wonderful musical experiences. The requested guitar will be our fourth electric guitar and let four students play at one time. Students are able to learn chords and riffs on the electrics and with class sizes in the upper 20s, it takes a while for everyone to rotate through and get a chance to play. This fourth guitar will provide more opportunities for my students.
One of our school community supporters gave us a set of Rhythm Band handbells and we are hooked!
They are the perfect melodic instrument for my younger students and will provide them with hands-on learning related to melody, pitch, and composition. With an additional three sets, we will have the perfect number for learning stations and individualized learning.
The Boomwhacker chromatic sets are the sharps and flats that fill in those notes we need for some songs. They will complement the regular diatonic sets that we already use. Not having sharps and flats has prevented us from playing certain songs and learning an essential part of music theory.
And finally, the bass amp will replace one that has developed a popping sound. With electric instruments, you are only as good as your amp and to get our bass up and running, we need this bass amp. The bass provides students with the opportunity to have a well-rounded sound to our modern band music-making.
Thank you for helping us make music with a "Boom, Rumble, Tinkle, Twang."
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Ms. Bartolomeo and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
