Happy Holidays from all of the teachers at Armstrong, and from me, Ms. Karlson!

It’s been an unusual Fall for the kids in music class compared to the last two years.

We are able to join together in activities that were not allowed to us through covid.

I want to reiterate for anyone who was not able to come to any performances this December that performing for a live audience is now an unusual experience for the children. The last assembly or concert we did was in 2020! This fall has been full of assemblies and sharing and performances. The children have less experience in these situations, and are therefore more nervous – as is to be expected. I myself and trying to get used to planning for these performances and follow them through, and that is another shift of mind-set for me. I have been shifting and shifting through these past three years of a pandemic, and another shift back to “normal” with children to whom a live performance is unusual is another mind-shift. There is a large learning curve that comes with learning performance skills when one has never or rarely been to a performance!

And I am sure it is a shift for parents as well. There was so much enthusiasm from parents to see their children sharing their gifts on a stage. It was lovely to have the opportunity to give that gift to parents who want to see their children succeed and perform.

And we have been slowly teaching the children how also to be an audience in a live performance. Knowing how to behave in a live performance is foreign to most of our students now. I thank all of my fellow teachers and the parents who were such great audience members through our last few performances. As I said at the Mall and at our December assembly, the kids really need the support and encouragement that was provided by those attending. Being patient and kind and unconditionally supportive is a great way to model the behaviour that makes a great audience great. People can really shine when the audience demonstrates positivity and “takes what is given to them” with enthusiasm. This is something I teach the children. Know that performance decisions are made for a reason. Mistakes can be made and forgiven. The performers are doing their best. Bad audience behaviour will just throw off the performer and make the performance worse. Unconditional support will make it better.

I hope parents, the other students and my colleagues will continue to demonstrate this in the future so Armstrong kids can enjoy performances for the rest of their lives and make us all proud to have modelled this life-skill to them.

Unfortunately, Armstrong students did not make it in to the top ten in the CBC music class challenge. But some Burnaby schools did! Congratulations to Capitol Hill Elementary, Glenwood Elementary, Marlborough Elementary and our neighbour – Second Street! Second Street got two top ten slots! Capitol Hill got in three! Amazing job to my colleagues, Burnaby music teachers!

Here is the link to see the top ten list in each category.

https://www.cbc.ca/music/events/canadian-music-class-challenge/canadian-music-class-challenge-2022-national-top-10s-revealed-1.6668881

Also, Divisions 12 and 15 will be carol singing at Lougheed Mall in front of London Drugs on Thursday, December 15th at 1pm.

Divisions 11, 13 and 14 will be carol singing at 2pm that day.

And our December assembly will be hosted by the grade one classes. It is on December 16th. There will be much sharing of learning and music by many classes. I hope families can join to share in their children’s music making.

Ms. Karlson is looking for performers for the Winter Wonderland walk-through on Tuesday, December 13th. Email her if you are interested at sonja.karlson@burnabyschools.ca

And lastly, grade six and seven students can sign up to be actors in our Spring Concert. Rehearsals will begin right away in January during lunch hours on Mondays and Thursdays. The performance will be on March 8th and 9th. Scripts will be handed out the first week of January and we will cast the play during the second week, so make sure you are serious if you sign up!

Our videos are now up online on the CBC Music Class Challenge YouTube page. Check them out using these links:

We are and will be singing songs in many languages. Singing is the act of making musical sounds with one’s voice. We are able to sing in languages in which we don’t necessarily speak. I teach the children to make the appropriate sounds with their voices to pronounce the words correctly. I also teach them the meaning of what they are saying. But, singing in other languages does a few things for us.
1. It teaches us empathy for others trying to sing in our native tongue
2. It teaches us about the sounds other languages make that may not be in our language
3. It “evens the playing field” for our ELL kids
4. It exposes us to more music from other countries, cultures, times in history, etc.
5. English is often a difficult language in which to sing because of our hard consonant sounds, diphthongs and ugly vowels. Other languages lend themselves better to proper singing technique

Here is “O Canada” in French. All of the classes except the Kindergartens have been learning this song. We sing it in French at every assembly. Maybe you would like to practice it at home? Did you know that the original song was only in French?

And our listening program this year will focus on French as we are a bilingual school. Vive le français!

Welcome back to a new school year!
“Music Class” is always a mixture of learning in the performing arts. Music encompasses dramatizations of the music we are learning, movement to express the music, and performance skills that translate into any performance situation. I like to think of myself as a performing arts teacher, and not just a music teacher. I will be teaching Drama, Music and Dance in integrated ways throughout the school year to all classes, and will be reporting on the students’ learning in all of these areas.

The expectations in my class are that students are as attentive as they can be, and put effort into all of the activities in my class. The learning can only happen when kids engage with the arts. I will create fun and engaging activities that challenge the students and offer useful learning goals. The students need to meet me halfway. We can have a lot of fun exploring the arts together. When children are excited about playing in the realm of the arts, exciting things can happen! We can create amazing artistic experiences together. When children come with a poor attitude and are not willing to learn, everyone in the room can get frustrated.

I realize that families have different comfort levels with the performing arts. Some families do artistic activities daily and those children are very willing to engage with arts activities. Other families are more reluctant and exploring the arts can feel more uncomfortable for the members of that family. I offer a space where everyone can feel safe and welcome to try out artistic activities with an educated teacher to guide your child through the basics of any art form. Encouragement from home can go a long way in helping your child open up to exploring artistic activities, even if you yourself are not learned in that realm. Elementary school arts offers a introduction to the possibilities of creativity and artistic activities people can engage with throughout their lives. My job is to open those doors to the children so they can choose their interests and possible passions for their creativity. Yours as a parent are to support them through that goal. The children will find what interests them and what they want to pursue. A positive environment will make them brave.

The only expectation I have is that they TRY and ALLOW OTHERS TO TRY. If a child is unwilling to try or is preventing others from trying, I will make contact with a parent to help adjust the mindset of their child so we create and maintain that safe space for the other children in the building to try as well.

I’m excited to introduce your children to some wonderful artistic activities this year and have amazing performing arts experiences!

A new program has been launched for the City of Burnaby to get instruments into the hands of people who may not be able to afford it.

Here is a link to the website where you can apply:

https://www.burnaby.ca/recreation-and-arts/programs-and-activities/arts-and-heritage/harmony-for-all

I know many of our students at Armstrong are interested in playing instruments more at home and in taking at home lessons. This will make practicing an instrument possible for a lot of our families.

Email me if you need a referral to the program – you need one from either a music teacher or a school administrator. Anything I can do to help, I will!

email me at sonja.karlson@burnabyschools.ca

Last week we viewed the concert “Colours” written by Ms. Karlson, filmed by students in Divisions one, two and three, and acted by our entire school population. The students were delighted to see themselves in the film. It was the first time in two years that we attended an assembly as well, so a very different kind of event than what we are used to!

Divisions 1,5,6,7,9,11,13,15,17 and 19 are in one movie labelled “Movie Two”.

Divisions 2,3,4,6,8,10,11,12,14,16 and 18 are in “Movie One”.

We are excited to share our concert movies with the parent group and community soon. We are just sorting out the best and safest way to stream the movie to families so everyone can enjoy our students’ hard work.

Most of the filming has been done for our Concert Movie!

There are a few groups and one class that still has a to be filmed. Hopefully we will be picking up those shots by the beginning of May.

Then the crew from Divisions 1, 2 and 3 will get to work on post-production of our film. The editing process will take a while, but our goal is to have the film ready by

May 17th!

Thank you to all of the parents/famillies who helped their child get a costume for this show. Thanks to everyone at home who encouraged their child to practice and get ready for their performance. And thank you to Kryshan Randall – our guest director who taught us how to make a movie!

This type of concert is a new venture for our Armstrong community, and I know we have all learned a lot by taking on this new challenge.

I truly hope you will enjoy the show once it is complete.

We will be filming our concert scenes next week and the week after!

Here is a list of the dates and times that your children will be filmed. Please make sure they have their costume at school on that day. And practice at home will really go a long way to make sure filming is expedient and at top quality to create a wonderful Concert Movie!

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We are working on a Spring Concert in the form of a movie!

You must have heard about it as the kids have been learning songs and dances and working hard on this project in music class up until Spring Break.

Rehearsals will continue after Spring Break for two weeks. Then it will be time to film our movie!

Students from Divisions 1, 2 and 3 will be the crew – filming and editing our movie together.

Other students from those divisions and divisions 4 and 5 will be acting the story for our movie.

All of the students of Armstrong are encouraged to be a part of this school wide project, and there are plenty of jobs to take on.

Here is a list of the costumes that families need to put together for their kids.

Remember that they need their costume for the filming weeks of April 11-22nd. Your classroom teacher will let you know on which day your child will need to wear their costume. The theme is “colours” so your child will need to wear as much of one colour as possible, unless they are a rainbow character. The rainbow characters will wear as many colours as possible at one time.

Please email me if you have more questions about this project or your child’s costume.

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