Snow Music Group Reading
Ideas for group reading
I have found that this works best with a little prep work. I usually talk about three things before reading it, which may sound complicated, but it's not, really.
1. "This may look like a book, but it's really a movie." "We're going to look at the book, but together we are going to be the soundtrack for the movie." Ask kids what kind of sounds we hear when we watch a movie.
-people talking to each other (conversation, dialogue)
-someone who tells us what's going on ( the storyteller or narrator)
-sound effects (car crashes, someone breathing fast, feet crunching on gravel)
-music (how do different kinds of music-scary, happy, exciting, for example, help us know what's going on?) *** This is a good place to play a few different kinds of music and ask kids to listen and imagine that they have the job of picking the music for a movie about animals walking in the snow. Which animal would this kind of music be good for? I have just picked out music with different tempos from my own collection of CD's. "We're going to make all of those kinds of sounds."
2. " By making these sounds and looking at the pictures, we will tell two stories at the same time." Story #1: Snow falls during the night while creatures, including children, are asleep in their nests. They wake up and go outside. During the day, the sun melts the snow. As evening falls, it begins to snow again, everyone goes home. And story #2: A dog gets loose and two friends search for him until they find him.
3. " All orchestras need to rehears at least once." Go through page by page to try out the different ways of story telling that will be employed.
- There are three short poems. They could be assigned to better readers, or the teacher could read them.
-"car" and "truck": divide the class into sections for a real orchestral/choral experience.
-"dog": choose a hugger and a jingler. A handful of pennies work well for the jingling.
-possible solos: bird, squirrel, deer. "Letting your fingers do the walking" can illustrate the pacing of these pages. Kids like to do this too.
-Dialogue parts can be assigned or read together.
-Everyone can go "peth, peth, peth", "fep, fep, fep", "k-tk", "ssh" and "oops". It is helpful to teach the conductor's hand motion for ending a piece of music so you can get them all to stop. Invite children to suggest other sounds they think falling snow might make.
Once you've rehearsed, you're ready for your performance. I had one group of younger chi8ldren who felt they had already done enough after the rehearsal, but other groups were all ready and willing to perform.
***It might be fun for kids to make up soundtracks for other stories and seasons.***