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Promoting Literacy
Poetry As Music
(Grades K-12)
This core program is at the heart of Julie's work with young people. Children experience poetry as alive-learning to listen, explore imagination, and improvise with musical instruments-as they experience poetry of many styles and cultures, write and revise their own poems, and discover many different ways to set their poems to music.Stories and Music
(Grades K-3)
Learn how music can help us to tell stories. Children create their own lyrics for chants and for songs, explore character voices, and play musical instruments to support theme, mood, symbolism, characters, structural devices, and plot sequence.
Understanding Nature
- Voices of the Hudson River (Grades 4-6)
- The Wonder of Nature (Grades K-12)
- The Science of Sound (Grades K-12)
Voices of the Hudson River
(Grades 4-5)
The river's story unfolds as a journey through time, topography, changing cultures, ecology, and the ongoing history of the environmental movement. Through their own creative writing, students become part of the river's story.The Wonder of Nature
(Grades K-12)
Out-door workshops and field trips that combine creative writing, music, and the study of nature.The Science of Sound
(Grades 3-5)
Weaving together concepts from the science of sound and an Aztec myth, Julie demonstrates the enchanting phenomena of vibration, sound waves, resonance, perception, and our ability to make music.
Developing Musicianship
Children Creating Music
(Grades 3-7)
Children learn to improvise, playing a wide variety of musical instruments in an ensemble. As conductors, they learn to use simple cues to vary dynamics and build sound texture compositions. Julie transcribes these compositions, using invented notation, which helps students to develop reading and mapping skills.The Joy of Singing
(Grades 2-12)
Introduce students to the most basic and magnificent musical instrument, the human voice. Julie performs and discusses the historical and social context of spirituals, art songs, and her own original vocal music.
Planning your Project
Projects are developed in partnership with teachers, and are usually based on essential questions or themes. Past projects have supported curriculum in English language arts, social studies, science, music, and health, as well as character education and outdoor education.
As an example, in one particular project, teachers were preparing fifth grade students for the NY State standardized test in social studies.
Project Goal:
To bring history alive, cover content of the revolutionary war, use skills required for document-based questions, and help students understand how to write a narrative.Project Plan:
- Julie Kabat teaches students to sing a ballad written by fourth graders about the Schenectady Massacre, reviewing narrative form and Dutch colonial history, while helping students to sing with expression.
- Teachers divide classes into cooperative groups, and assign documents that cover different issues and events in the Revolutionary War.
- In workshops, students imagine themselves inside the documents, and, using brainstorming and storytelling techniques, create first-person narratives, including lines of dialogue.
- Using a few instruments, each group prepares to tell its story with a musical accompaniment. In each class, groups perform for each other and critique their presentations.
- All classes meet in the library, and perform the stories in chronological order-giving a lively interpretation of issues and events in the Revolutionary War.
