"Spotlight On..."

submitted by Becky Olsen

One bulletin board in my room remained up all year.  I found some clip art on the Internet of big spotlights...like the kind they used to have in front of  car dealers and grand openings.  I  enlarged and
printed them and cut them out for the upper corners of the board.  In the middle at the top, in big, bright letters, I had "SPOTLIGHT  ON"  and on the next line the name of the instrument I was spotlighting.  

I
started off the year with  tubanos, 'cause the PTO bought me 6 of them last summer.  I printed out 5 or 6 facts about the instruments. " Tubanos were invented by Remo Belli in 1957.   Tubanos are a cross between African and Cuban drums. The heads of the tubanos are made of  mylar.  Humidity does not affect the sound of the drum.  Tubanos are played only with our hands."  Then I cut  the sentences out like they were on cartoon balloons and scattered them around the board with pictures of the instruments.  I intended to add pictures of kids playing the instruments, but never got around to that.  When the fourth grade started recorders in November,  I just took down the tubano info and changed the instrument to Recorder, and did the same kind of thing.  The kids loved stopping to read the facts, and we used it as an interactive board to quiz on facts about the instruments.  I'm planning on doing something similar next year, but changing it every month (the best laid plans.....) to spotlight a new orchestral instrument.  I'll time it so that the French horn is up when we do Peter and the Wolf, as the wolf theme is such a good example of French horns!