What did you like best about the lesson(s)?

• There was something for Everyone-from the youngest to my oldest students. The kids were very energized by the music!
• I am very interested in using music in the classroom, and the songs with the lesson plans were a great way to start.
• It gave the students a chance to see how the other arts can work together in the creation of original works. The words and music created a sense of mood and rhythm that contributed the resulting visual interpretations. They also got a chance to see how the arts can exhibit using new technology.
• The songs of course
• The chance to show how the arts connect influencing a sense of mood, rhythm, pattern, and imagery.
• Having the words to the song

Please ask your students the following questions and record their responses. What did they like the best?

• I observed that the kids were very excited
• By the new songs and had selected "favorites".
• They enjoyed the words and particularly the music as they created their own images. They loved getting the work uploaded so that both strangers and family could view it and even print it.
• Everyone who went to the concert enjoyed seeing how everything came together to create a wonderful theater performance.
• They loved seeing their images on the Internet where others could see and print them around the world.
• The concert was a hit with both they students and their parents.
• Putting their work on the Internet

Mary Ellen Trivette
Hermitage Elementary

MAGIC was an extraordinary extension tool, which provided a hands on engaging intellectual higher thinking experience to all students regardless of their ability or learning style. MAGIC was very easy to implement and extremely effective. MAGIC was used as a culminating activity for science, a writing activity for reading and writing, a social studies review activity, and as an introductory tool for many areas.

Every lesson that I delivered with the MAGIC required that students analyze information, infer their own thoughts and ideas, draw conclusions, use reasoning skills, and synthesize information. My objective with MAGIC was to take the core curriculum, the Virginia Standards of Learning and incorporate the use of higher thinking skills with each and every child.

The use of MAGIC enabled students to think to their full potential and capability. This is evidenced by the narratives that my students wrote when explaining their artwork and by their explanations when discussing their creations. By allowed the opportunity for my students to expand the level of their thinking as well. This emotional powerhouse of a song had a huge impact on my class. Out of a total of fourteen students, I have two students that have had dramatic illness in their family. One child has a sister who has had a heart transplant and one child has a five-year-old brother that has battled cancer. After listening to Miracle Match and an emotional class discussion with these two students taking the lead the children created their artwork, I was amazed by the variety of reactions that the children had , from the scientific to the emotional.

From Other teachers:

Magic enabled my students to be successful by implementing a hands on approach to learning and an opportunity to reach higher level thinking skills. After teaching a lesson, the children listened to a Magic song that was related to the topic of the lesson. While listening to the songs, the children expressed themselves by drawing their feelings on paper. The children then had to provide a description of what they produced. By doing this, the children were using their feelings generated by the music as a tool for learning. This new and exciting method of learning was invigorating for both the kids and myself. The children were encapsulated by the music and had fun as a result of their own creativity. I also had a really enjoyable time analyzing what the children produced.

I was very impressed by how well the children retained the objective of the lesson after incorporating Magic. Because the songs from Magic were correlated to the Virginia Standards of Learning, I was able to easily implement them into the Magic enabled my children to make connections from the songs to their lives and their world. Magic was able to captivate, inspire, and invigorate all students of all abilities, socio-economic levels, interests, and backgrounds. It gave my students the ability to explore different ways to express themselves that had not previously been available. It let their imagination take flight and their creativity to soar. As Willy Wonka once said, "We are the music makers, we are the dreamers of dream." With the help of the Magic program we were able to make dreams out of the music.

The songs and lessons in Magic were themselves an enhancement to the lessons and curriculum. Utilizing Magic in my classroom allowed my students to express themselves through music. My students and I especially enjoyed the "I Can Be Me" song because it allowed them to be proud of who they are and to grasp the realization that all people are unique and have different dreams, interests, and abilities. To make the Magic song "I Can Be Me" have more relevance, I related it to the play Pippy Longstocking that we were fortunate to have recently seen at the Pavilion. Of course, the character Pippy is a child who is undoubtedly proud of who she is, but is also someone who has unusual mannerisms, dress, likings, and behavior. She is a character who can always be herself and does not feel that she has to please anyone. After watching this play we discussed Pippy and what type of person she was. We were able to see Pippy as someone who could express herself freely.

Most of the children who attend Hermitage Elementary School have parents that are affiliated with the military. Often, when children's parents are in the military they frequently move to different places. Because of this, children are often attending new schools with new children and new curriculums. This can be a very trying experience. The song "Colors All Our Own" was a wonderful tool to discuss how we feel when we are not accepted for who we are because of what we look like, our ethnicity, the way we talk, or the way we dress. This song was used in our social studies lesson to help the children understand the struggles that African Americans and Native Indians endured because of their race. We reviewed and discussed important hurdles these famous Americans overcame to make our country what it is today. There was even a quote by Martin Luther King in the song that enhanced the children's learning. We were able to see that we want people to stretch their arms out to us and like us for who we are.