Bridge #2

Bridge Lesson #2: Your kids are doing great. We're having fun in class and they're working hard. I'm pushing them to stretch their thinking and they're doing it!

ASSIGNMENT SHEET 2

Magic Key Technique Book: Again, this portion should go pretty quickly. Play through them and move on.

    *Secret Circle Finger Exercise: Good work on this! Make sure that those knuckles stay strong.

    *C Major Scale: If they can't do it as fast as the recording, spend a few days playing it slowly but correctly hands together. Then try it with the recording again.

    *C Major Triads: I have mixed feelings about this exercise. I do see why it is important, but it's also kind of cumbersome. Work through it this week by following the patterns in the box on page 7 with the recorded track.

    *C Major Chord Progression: We didn't get to this in class. Don't worry about it this week.

Student Songbook

    *Primary Chords Song with V7 pg 18: We added a 7 to the V chord! We talked through the meaning of the V and the 7, and how to play it. I told them they could play the three-note V7 chord as written, or the four-note V7 chord that we did in class. 

    *Chords in Pieces with V7 pg 21: Careful fingering!

    *Don't Put Your Trash pg 34: We didn't get to this in class, but keep working down the levels.

    *Primary Chord Dance pg 26: The right hand plays the same chord notes as the left hand in each measure. Just watch the rhythms! This is a fun one. The left hand plays beat one, and the right plays the rest of the beats. Playing this one hands together is almost easier than hands separately because they take turns!

Student Workbook: Do the Theory activities first. The Rhythm & Reading and the Music History are secondary in importance.

    *Rhythm & Reading 2: We did not get to this in class. Write in counts on a few of them. There are a lot, so no worries about doing them all.

    *Theory 2: They should be able to do these no problem.

    *Music History and Composer's Corner 2: We did not get to these in class. My plan was to review the eras of music history that we talked about last week. They can look at page 6 to be able to fill in page 12. Page 13 is a video of a medieval instrument. It is interesting, but not required.

Flashcards

    *Do any note naming activity. As always, you can write in times if that works for your student. If timing adds anxiety without helping them learn, then skip it. 

**I will give stickers to each section of the book they do, and just skip over what they don't do with no guilt or concern.

Bridge #1

Bridge Lesson #1: I'm so happy to have your kids back in class! Just like during LPM, I'm going to outline things in these Parent Notes. Because Bridge is more involved, the Parent Notes will describe more of what they should be doing than I did in LPM. As always, let me know if you have questions or concerns!

BRIDGE OVERVIEW

This is what I would have given in a Parent Orientation had I done one for Bridge. Alas...

SO MUCH INFORMATION: The Bridge curriculum is packed. Some teachers even like to break it up into two years so they can spend more time on each part. At this point, I've chosen to keep it at a year, and to highlight the most important things. The other things are good, and we might touch on them, but not necessarily needed to advance overall.

CURRICULUM MATERIALS: There are four books with the Bridge curriculum.

1. The green Semester 1 Workbook

2. The yellow Semester 2 Workbook

3. The red Magic Key Technique Book

4. The blue Songbook

I kept the yellow books to pass out in January. The kids have the other three in their bags and we will use them all each week. The red and blue books have the songs we'll be using and playing. The green book has the assignment sheets and workbook pages.

WORKBOOK LAYOUT (the green book): 

*The class calendar is on the inside front cover. It lists which lesson we will be doing which day, and then identifies which lesson spread they should be working on.

*Each class has six workbook pages that correlate to the lesson. 

    -The first page is "Assignment Sheet." I'll talk about this more in the next section. 

    -The second page is "Rhythm & Reading." This has rhythms both to clap and to write in the counting. This is a great activity and can strengthen their counting skills. We will do some of these in class, but not all of them. If they want to do these at home, they totally can. This is pretty low on my list of most important things though.

    -The third and fourth pages are "Theory" activities. Some of these we'll do in class, and some should be done at home. There are four "days" of theory activities each week. You can do them one per day or all on the same day. These are higher on my list of important things. 

    -The fifth and sixth pages are "Music History" and "Composers." Some of these we'll do in class. The rest you can do at home if it's an enjoyable part for them. A lot of these have QR codes that lead to videos and things. Some are fun and some are more tedious. While I think understanding music history is a valuable and fun part of studying music, these are also low on the list of important things. We'll talk about it in class and they only need to explore more if they want to.

*There will be a binder clip on the books that holds back all of the future lesson pages, and a paper clip on the first page of this week's lesson. Right now, the paper clip is on page 2, the assignment sheet for lesson 1, and the binder clip shows page 7 and holds back pages 8-back cover.

ASSIGNMENT SHEET (the first page in the green workbook for each lesson): There is an assignment sheet each week to outline activities to do at home. this is divided into the books that the activities are in. 

*Magic Key Technique Book: This will have the scales and cadences, plus a technique song or two each week. They can do this section with the recordings and it'll go pretty quick in practice. 

*Student Songbook: This is the section they'll spend the most time in. Most of the times it will list the song, along with specific things to be thinking about while they play, much like the LPM workbooks. Some of them will have "levels." These outline different steps of mastery. Start with level one, then go on to deeper levels. If your student stays on one or two, that's totally fine. They're mastering the level they are at. This is one thing I really like about the Bridge program, and it makes it possible for every kid to both succeed and push themselves to do more.

*Student Workbook: This is the green book that the assignment sheet is in, and that I talked about in the first section. I would like them to do *something* in the workbook section. But they (or you!) can choose what that is. The Rhythm and Reading section can get tedious... I feel it's asking for a LOT of writing of counts every week and it gets so monotonous that it might get in the way of actual learning. But they could choose two lines to do. If they enjoy the theory activities, then do all four. If it feels more like busy work and adds more frustration to your world, then do one or two and skip the ones that feel drawn out. The music history spread is something we'll talk about in class. If they want to do the things we don't cover, they can. But again, not high in priority. I will give stickers to each section of the book they do, and just skip over what they don't. 

*Flashcards: Oh how I wish that this section was called NOTE NAMING!! Flashcards are a great way to practice note naming. But there are other games and apps and ways to do it. There are five areas to write a time that you do the flashcards in. I don't care about timing. Some kids react positively to timing and it helps them get better. Others are so anxious about the timer that they end up dreading the note naming and it ends up slowing their learning. Do whatever note naming activities you want, once or more a week to help solidify this skill.

LESSON #1

Going through this week's assignment sheet...

*Magic Key Technique Book

    -Secret Circle Finger Exercise, pg 2: focus on rounded fingers and no buckled knuckles. You can do this with the recording, once for each hand. The recording is 1 minute and 16 seconds. Do it once for each hand.

    -C Major scale, pg 6: do this with the recording. It goes through the scale three times for the right hand, then three times for the left hand, then three times for both hands. The recording is 2 minutes and 11 seconds. 

*Student Songbook

    -Primary Chords pg 17

    -Chords in Pieces pg 21

    -Don't Put Your Trash pg 34: Start at Level 1(block-marching-broken chords with each hand separate) and continue to Level 2 (block-marching-broken chords with each hand with both hands together... This is where I think all of your students should be by next week). If you'd like, figure out the melody with the right hand to be able to move onto level 3 (melody with the RH, block chords with the LH), or level 4 (melody with the RH, block-marching-broken chords with the LH)

*Flashcards Note Naming :) 

    -Do any note naming activity. You can use the flashcards or not, but practice your note naming skills.