These past few weeks we have been helping out the NPJH teacher, Mrs. McDonald, with the organization of her music. With over 500 copies of all different types of songs and genre, it has been a very tasking assignment. With the organization, we have to number off each box of music and organize them on a spread sheet with what type of music it is, and also what part it is. That being 3 part mixed, SAB, or SATB.
Our other priorities have been helping the 8th graders with their upcoming show choir auditions. I personally have helped them with the audition dance. 4 other dance captains and I have put a simple, but challenging dance together for them to learn. As well as all other high school students who are interested in joining show choir. This will be the first year where 8th graders are allowed to tryout for show choir, and it has been quite exciting. The last thing that I have been working on, is helping Mrs. McDonald with her spring concert. I have choreographed a dance for the Advanced Choir to learn, and it has been going great. The kids seem to really enjoy dancing in class, and I have seen a lot of the kids in the Advanced Choir sign up to Audition for Show Choir!
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For the start of Semester 2, Sydney, Ethan, and I have been working with Mrs. McDonald and her Introduction to Music class. This is a new class that was introduced to the Junior High that involves learning about rhythm, notes, and eventually playing the guitar. Ethan is more knowledgeable with the guitar, so it has been very helpful with him on the team. We have helped the kids understand different music definitions, and also help them get more involved in the creation of music. Since the 3rd grade program has been finished, we are excited to start participating in one of the Advanced 7th grade choirs. I have also been asked to choreograph a dance for the Advanced Choir for there Spring Concert. it will be to ABC by the Jackson 5. There is more to come with this group of students and we are very excited to work with Mrs. McDonald more in the future.
For the past couple months we have been working with Mrs. McDaniel and her 3rd Grade classes in order to get them prepared for there 3rd Grade program. We have helped the kids with their singing and dancing, and have helped Mrs. McDaniel with the organization of the production. Last Friday we helped the UA teachers hand up all the art work for the program. The program took place on St. Patrick's Day, March 17. Lots of parents came, and so did many teachers. It was a joy to help out with and see the kids get excited about music.
On February 8th, we traveled over to the Junior High, along with Crimson Heat (the Mixed Show Choir), to talked to the 8th graders that already participate in a music class. We gave a presentation that was more leaning towards older kids, and we talked about how you can do choir and sports. Some kids seemed really interested in the topics. We even had some kids with questions afterwards. We are thankful to participate in this presentation along with the Junior High music teacher, Mrs. McDonald, and the NPHS music teacher, Mr. Beebe.
For the next portion of our project, we have been getting in touch with the music teachers at the Intermediate, the Junior High, and also on of the elementary schools, Sugar Creek. I have emailed them, offering to help in anyway needed. We have not had much luck hearing back from the teachers, but we hope to get everything scheduled out soon.
We are completing our last two presentations this week, which means it has sadly come to an end. Our NPE visits were awesome, and the kids seemed to really get into Just Dance. Even the teachers where joining in. We have seen kids get more interested in music, and it's great to see how much our presentation really stood out to them, and made them interested in music.
For now, we are still figuring out the next steps in this project, but we plan to attend the Intermediate and Junior High to share presentations the music classrooms next semester. I would like to say thank you to all the teachers who let us come into there classrooms and give our presentations. It has been a blast! On October 19 we had completed our last SCE visit to Mrs. Sleeth's 2nd grade class! Over all our first round of visits went great. We had 8 in total, and all the teachers said they loved having us come in and talk about the benefits of music, and get the kids interested in the arts!
We just started taking requests for New Palestine Elementary, and we already have 6 visits planned! The kids seem to really love asking questions, and dancing to the game Just Dance. They also like to share their favorite songs, and also tend to love talking about their favorite activities/sports. It has been a pleasure doing this first round of visits, and I can't wait to do more! We had our first presentation at Sugar Creek Elementary with Mrs. Knoop's 3rd Grade class on September 14th, 2022. The kids asked lots of great questions and seemed really interested in learning about music! After playing Just Dance we summarized what we had learned. Mrs. Knoop also explained to the children that they were happy and energized after playing the game, because the music and dancing put them in a good and excited mood. I could not have explained it better my self! It was a great first presentation and we were excited to do more!
To schedule our presentations for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade classrooms, we created a Google Form sheet that the teachers could fill-out and respond: 1.) If they where willing to let us present in their classrooms, 2.) Decide what day works best for them, and 3.) What time works best for their busy schedules. We decided to start off slow, and only send the first round just to Sugar Creek Elementary. As of this moment 8 teachers have responded and scheduled a presentation time with us! We are keeping track of our dates in a google sheet, and also both our calendars. After we scheduled our presentations, we quickly got to work on the actual presentation. We both had a rough idea on what we wanted to talk about in our presentation: how music is beneficial, our story for music, further opportunities, and a fun game to wrap up the presentation. The big challenge we faced was that we needed to make this presentation fun and something a second grader could understand. So, I enlisted help from my sister, Emma Poag, who is an elementary education major at Anderson University. She helped up make our presentation interesting and full of color, and she also helped us get a good idea on how to explain complex words and ideas to little kids. After some time, we finished our presentation and are ready for our first pitch day on September 14, with Mrs. Knoop. On our Pre-Pitch Day, we got great feedback on how to include everyone in our project, and we also found out that most people find the decline of numbers in the high schools choral programs shocking and a surprise. Unfortunately, on Pitch Day I was sick with Covid-19, although my partner Sydney was there and gave a great pitch about what we plan on doing for our service project. She talked about how we are dividing our service project into two semesters, for an end goal of a year long project. The first semester we plan on give presentations to different elementary grade classrooms. We will talk about what music is and how it is good for you, and also future opportunities in music during the presentations. This will be the part of our project where we "Mentor", "Understand", and "Share" music. We are hoping this raises awareness for music in the future generations. The second semester will focus more on the "Involving" and "Creating" part of our project, with the hopeful collaboration with Visions choir in the future. After Pitch Day, we got straight to work on getting emails out to elementary teachers, hoping to find willing participants. |