March 28, 2023
Dear E-2 Families,
Tomorrow, Wednesday, March 29th, your fourth grader will attend the BioSite field trip. Please make sure your child wears warm clothing, a rain jacket or windbreaker with a hood, and sturdy shoes that can get muddy or damp. Even if it does not rain, the outdoor site will likely be wetter than usual. In the event of rain, plans have been made to bring the day’s instruction, all about Macroinvertebrates, indoors to classrooms at Pioneer High School. Reed departure and return times will remain the same, and no more parent drivers are required! We are looking forward to this adventure for sure.
Last week, fourth graders enjoyed another amazing field trip, this time seeing the San Jose Symphony perform selected music at the California Theater on Market Street in downtown San Jose. Attached you will find a letter of introduction from the Symphony, which includes information on the theme of the field trip as well as links to many of the pieces students enjoyed last week.
These field trips are just a small slice of what is going on in our classroom. Please keep an eye out for more updates over the next two weeks before Spring Break!
Warmly,
Ms Seyan Seyan
Educator
“It’s About Time” Symphony San Jose
Music happens across time, so it makes sense that musicians have a kind of language about time that enables them to read music and then perform it. “It’s About Time” will explain some of this language and help open the door to musical understanding for you and your students.
The emphasis of this concert will be METER – how music is divided up into sections, called ‘measures,’ made up of groups of beats. Meter is represented with a “time signature” that looks like a fraction in math. The upper number tells us how many beats there are in each measure. The lower number shows how long each beat lasts. If a piece has two beats in each measure, its time signature is “2/4”. If it has three beats per measure, then it’s in “3/4” time, and so on.
Marches have two or four beats per measure, and Maestro Jaffe will be playing music by Prokofiev to demonstrate a march time signature. Waltzes are always “in three” or 3⁄4 time, and we will play one, a dance of gypsies by Georges Bizet. But we will open the program with The Star Spangled Banner, also in 3⁄4 time. Maestro Jaffe will enhance these lessons with a rousing rendition of Mission Impossible in 5/4 time, a jazz piece by the legendary Dave Brubeck in 7/4 and even a piece in 9 /8 time by Richard Wagner. Along the way your students will learn a bit about instrument families, music history and cultural context, but they will be having too much fun to notice!
https://www.naxoslicensing.com/playlist/MzIyNDcyNC03ZWM4ZWY/
E-2 Excellence 