Meet Rennie All

Rennie All is a music teacher at James B. Edwards Elementary School. During her 30 years of teaching, Rennie has involved students in active, hands-on experiences that sequentially develop music reading and performing skills. She focuses music instruction on cross-curricular subject matter, striving to use music as a means to apply knowledge in math, science, social studies, and language arts. Each year, she coordinates a school-wide festival of song, dance, costume, scenery, and drama that is the culmination of a yearlong study by the students in various curricular areas.

Rennie All 's Best Practice Strategy: 
Using the WebQuest,"Destination Anywhere", students work in teams of 3 or 4 to discover and present cultural information about a country assigned to that group.

Lesson Plan Overview:
In the music classroom, Rennie uses the software program, Play Music, which gives students the opportunity to notate the music they hear on a computer-generated staff. Next they play the music they notated on a midi-adapted music keyboard and the computer verifies their accuracy. The students also go on-line to research the music and cultures of the world. Specific categories of research to be completed by each group include: climate and historical information; cultural information; dances and costumes; instruments and music; and art styles. Points are awarded in each category for copying and pasting information, saving an image in a student folder and then inserting the picture from their folder onto the new word document. The students are also required to attach either a sound clip, a movie of a song, or an instrument from their country. The completed Background Information Charts are stored in student folders in the shared folder for teacher access for evaluating and compiling information for the skit that will tell this year's May Day story, "Child of the World."

WebQuest
Teacher Page
Sample Rubric
Students' Daily Assignments on Computer
Sample Student Project on Ireland