At Lewis we are very fortunate to have a great music program. In addition to music classes, students have the opportunity to take part in recorder club, instrumentalbBand and a marimba group we call the Boom'n Beats. Another aspect of our program is the Brummitt-Taylor Music Listening Program.

From the publishers web site...
The program is a daily, non-directed approach to music listening that can be used school-wide or in individual classrooms. One composer is featured each week and one selected work of that composer is repeated each day over the school's PA system, or on a portable stereo. A prepared script for each day accompanies the musical selection, informing listeners of the name of the composer, the name of the composition, and artistic characteristics of the featured work.

You will note above that the method that they describe for playing to musical pieces to the whole school is a school wide PA/Audio system. At Lewis we don't have one of those, so we have put the music on our intranet server and have linked to the music pieces from our staff bulletin page. Each week our music teacher, Tony Jamesbarry, writes a short web post for the staff and community with more information about each featured composer. This weekly post has a link to the music file and the teachers play it out over their laptops which are hooked into speakers. The music is only available on our intranet.

Last year we had the teachers read each short introduction to each piece. This year we have started out having Tony record the introductions. (We recently purchased a M-Audio MicroTrack recorder for this and other podcasting work.) We have provided our teachers with the option of reading the intro to their students themselves, or having the students listen to Tony's recorded intro. (Tony has one of those great radio voices... ) Later this fall, he plans to have some 4th and 5th grade students recording these as well.