At the end of the school year, I wanted to reinforce the notes B A and G or mi, re, and do in 3rd grade general music. They learned to read and perform the notes B A and G on the treble clef staff through singing, performing on the recorder, and performing on the Korg X50 keyboards that we used when we visited the grades 4-8 music lab. In this project, they were given guidelines on how to create a background accompaniment to the B A and G improv that they would record in GarageBand. They were given a style and created a four-measure intro, an eight-measure accompaniment, and then a four-measure coda. As you can hear, they improvised during the eight-measure accompaniment. This 3rd grader decided to use a synthesizer sound as his improv instrument. Please remember that this is a 3rd grader. He did a nice job.
Amy Burns
Amy M. Burns holds a Bachelor of Music in both Education and Performance from Ithaca College and a Master of Science in Music Education from Central Connecticut State University, with her capstone research project focusing on composition with music technology at the second grade level. She also holds TI:ME levels 1 and 2 certification as well as Orff level 1 certification and Kodály level 1 certification. For the past eleven years, Ms. Burns has taught general music to grades Pre-Kindergarten through three, directed the instrumental band, the flute and clarinet ensembles, the elementary choruses, and coordinated the after-school conservatory for Far Hills Country Day School, in Far Hills, New Jersey. She has presented workshops on integrating music technology into the elementary music classroom for district and state conferences in New Jersey, Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maine, Connecticut, New York, Michigan, and Texas. Ms. Burns has also presented sessions at the 2004, 2006, and 2008 national conferences for Technology Institute for Music Educators (TI:ME); the 2006 National Association for Music Education (MENC) national conference in Salt Lake City, Utah; and the 2007 MENC eastern divisional conference in Hartford, Connecticut. She has contributed lesson plans to SoundTree’s Educator Corner and has written articles for the TI:ME website, the TI:ME newsletter, SoundTree Resource News, MENC General Music Today, NJMEA Tempo, and Music Education Technology (MET) magazine. She is the lead author and editor of a book of technology-enhanced lesson plans titled, Technology Integration in the Elementary Music Classroom, recently published by Hal Leonard. In 2005, Ms. Burns was awarded the first-ever TI:ME Teacher of the Year Award in recognition of her outstanding achievements in integrating music technology into the elementary classroom. In 2008, she was elected as President-Elect of TI:ME.

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