Start your year with the beautifully inclusive music lesson and picture book All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold. An original melody and adaptations for grades PreK—5 make this an ideal first-day lesson or review of procedures and rules in the music classroom.
by Kristin Berger
Lesson Sketches
All Are Welcome – Orff
This lesson uses children’s book All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold, as a starting point to teach a pentatonic melody. Students use Keetman’s Rhythmic Building Bricks to identify the rhythm of the word Welcome in several languages, then compose an eight-beat melody to accompany this song.
The book All Are Welcome, written by Alexandra Penfold and illustrated by Suzanne Kaufman, is a gorgeous piece of children’s literature that belongs in all music classrooms. It showcases a student’s day in their school: visiting the gymnasium, cafeteria, classroom, and even music classroom, which not many school-themed books do! I used this book as my first-day inclusive music lesson for all of my students in my school, which has students in PreK through fifth grade. I did not get sick of singing the book at all, and my students enjoyed the extension activities!
Encourage students to sing along with the phrase All Are Welcome Here.
Sing traditional name game or welcome song from your repertoire.
Day Two:
Sitting in a circle, sing the book with the students.
Transfer the rhythm All Are Welcome Here to hand drums.
Spread out the drums so every other student has an instrument.
Pass the drums to the right after every repetition of the words All Are Welcome Here.
Students pass the drum after the word Here.
Explore the best processes for obtaining, holding, playing, and returning the instruments in the music classroom.
This is a skill set that we use throughout the school year.
First & Second Grades
Day One:
Same Lesson as Preschool & Kindergarten
Day Two:
Teach or review procedure for retrieving Boomwhackers™, rest position, and proper playing technique.
Divide students into groups of three.
Give each group a light green, yellow, red, and orange Boomwhacker™.
Students collaborate to decode the melodic phrase All Are Welcome Here.
Once they have figured out the melody each group plays for the class.
Then the entire class practices playing the phrase together.
Reread the book while students play the phrase All Are Welcome Here together on their Boomwhackers™.
Third – Fifth Grades
Sing the book to the students.
Third grade students worked in pairs to decode the melodic phrase All Are Welcome Here.
The fourth and fifth graders worked in pairs and tasked with decoding the entire melody.
Since so many of our students were not in the music classroom during COVID, this was a really big challenge for most of my students! It was great to see the students working together to solve the puzzle.
When students are secure in playing the melody, teach the other barred instrument parts.
Sing the book with all of the accompanying parts.
Final Thoughts
Ms. Penfold and Ms. Kaufman have created my very favorite first-day-of-school book, hands down. The vibrant colors, inclusive wording, representative body shapes and relationship types, rhyme scheme, and so much more instantly brought the melody into my head as I read their book. I look forward to using this outline and adapting it for my classroom for many years to come!
Kristin Berger is a general music teacher at an elementary school in Ann Arbor Public Schools, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She holds degrees in Music Education (BS), Vocal Performance (BA), and Secondary Education (M.Ed) from Xavier University in Cincinnati,…