Red, White and Blue and Movie Maker, too!

♦ May 16, 2014 ♦ Leave a comment

Several years ago, I realized that our students were not spending enough time singing/learning patriotic song literature.  In elementary music instruction, we have SO many areas to address and for me, this area had gotten lost in the shuffle.  So…JoAnn and I sat down and compiled a list of the songs we wanted them to learn. I took that list and designed a patriotic component for our curriculum.

I organized them into patriotic streams and I made a movie for each grade level containing the songs, streamed together, from our list.  Kindergarten begins very simply and each successive grade adds songs/verses.  Even though it is definitely challenging for the littles, The Star-Spangled Banner is included in every grade level.

p streams pic

We introduce the streams at the beginning of the year and then sing them at random times through-out the year, also including them in the end-of-year activities. This continual exposure has definitely allowed our students to become familiar with these beautiful, meaningful songs!

I created a flipchart, linked the movies to the chart and linked the flipchart to my desktop so that it is always at my mousetip.  I use title pages like this for all of my units…it streamlines navigation of media during instruction.

Patriotic Flp pic

Unfortunately, I cannot share my movies because of copyright issues; however, I have provided a detailed list of the song material for each grade stream and the audio source for the music.  Click here.

TECHNOLOGY HINT:  I use Windows MovieMaker 2.6 to create all sorts of movies.  In particular, these movies have replaced all the word charts of yesterday.  Let me tell you, it is luxury to use a word chart movie in lieu of a tattered, hand written word chart.  LOVE!!!  Learning to make movies is a lot of work but it saves so much time and attention during instruction, it is time well spent!

Be advised….Windows Movie Maker 2.6 is not the latest movie maker product from Microsoft.  The latest version that comes with new computers does not have a timeline and is not efficient for my use.  When I teach a movie making workshop, I advise students to download the old 2.6.

SO, keep those flags waving and make some movies!

 

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