What Will the Weather Be? Concert Ideas for Upper Elementary

This year was my first year doing spring performances! When I was planning my performances, I wanted them to be different from the Christmas Concert. I wanted them to give parents a glimpse of what our daily music class looks like. So, I programmed it differently from my traditional concert and called it a Spring Showcase! 

The traditional Christmas concert at my school features all the classes, from kindergarten to grade 5. The students come on the stage, sing their song, and wait in the classroom for the remainder of the concert. This was the first thing that I wanted to change when planning a Spring Showcase. I wanted the students to stay in the gym the entire time. That meant planning 2 concerts. One for Kindergarten to Grade 2 students and one for Grades 3-5 students.  

The Grade 3-5 Concert was themed: What will the Weather be, and we performed songs about all types of weather!

When planning the concert, I knew I wanted each individual class to have its own special song, each grade level to have a song, and whole-group songs. I also wanted to show examples of the things we do in every music class- singing, moving, and playing instruments. With those guidelines, here is what I came up with!

1. There’s Weather Out There: This was our opening song, sung by all the students. I found it in Music K-8. It was catchy, upbeat, and talked about all types of weather. We added some simple actions to help students remember the words, as they got the order of the lyrics mixed up a bit. 

2. I Can’t Stand Still Under These Raindrops: This song also came from Music K-8 and was performed by one of my grade 3/4 classes. For this song, each student had an umbrella that they opened at the beginning, and we did some very basic choreography throughout. This song has a scatty part in the middle that took some extra practice!

Also, learn from me, if you are going to use umbrellas, you are going to need at least twice as much room for your students to move them as you think! 

3. Whacky Winter Song: This song was another one that was performed by one of my grade ¾  classes, and it also comes from Music K-8. The song was originally scored for boomwhackers, but I re-scored it for xylophones, metallophones, and glockenspiels. I had actually taught this song in January and brought it back for the concert. 

​4. Let’s the Storm Begin: My grade 5 students performed this song for the showcase. The song comes from Andy Beck’s book Weather the Weather. We added non-pitched percussion instruments to all of the sound words. Some of the non-pitched percussion instruments we used were drum, cowbell, triangles, cymbals, wood block, vibra slap, and thunder drum. This song was a hit with my grade 5 students! 
5. Here Comes the Sun: A Beatles classic. This song was sung by all of my grade 3 and grade 4 students, and they seemed to really enjoy singing it.  

6. Tornado: Tornado is the last of the songs sung by my grade 3/4 classes. The song also comes out of Andy Beck’s Weather the Weather resource. Overall, this song is easy to sing, so to make it more impressive, we add movement with scarves and fans. I had four students you grey, black, and white belly dancing fans, found an Amazon, and moved them throughout the song. The rest of the students had black scarves to use. We moved the scarves to show mini tornadoes, clouds, and a dark sky. The movement was definitely a bonus for this song. 

7. Who Has Seen the Wind: This is a song that I picked up from my Orff Level One course and added an Orff arrangement to. This song was performed by my Grade 4/5 classes. It is one of those songs that takes 30 seconds so here is how we played with the form to extend it. 

1. Sung the song with the piano 
2. Sung the song with a level bordun 
3. Sung the song with a level bordun and glissandos 
4. Played the melody with a level bordun and glissandos 
5. Sang the song, played the melody, glissandos, and level bordun.

​Grab my arrangement of Who Has Seen the Wind here!

8. Weather the Weather: This was the first concert that I had my extracurricular music group perform at. They performed an Orff Arrangement that I found here:
​https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Whether-the-Weather-68-Meter-Rhyme-for-Barred-Instruments-With-Orff-Arrangement-8788718

We pretty much played it as written, and performing in 6/8 time was a good challenge for this group. 

9. Northern Lights: This was our finale and was a show stopper. Northern Lights, written by Andy Beck, was a great reminder of the beauty all around us. The song is sung in two parts, and I had my extracurricular kids perform the echoes while everyone else sang the main melody. To add to the wow factor, we turned all the lights off in the gym and gave each student a glow stick to wave through the song. It was very impressive! 

Script: I really strive to keep everything flowing smoothly at my concerts, and a script is one of the easiest ways to do that. At my Christmas Concerts, I rehearse a play with students, and for this showcase, I already had enough other moving parts that I didn’t want to also need to allocate time to practice and rehearse a script with students. Since the students were in the gym the entire time, the classroom teachers were there for the entire performance as well, so I had them read a script I wrote to connect the songs. An extra tip for your script- don’t have teachers introduce their own class, not only is it weird for them to talk in third person, but then they are also available to help their class get ready to perform if needed. ​

I have made the script for this concert a freebie! Get your copy here!

Costumes and Decor
Full disclosure- costumes and decor are NOT my strong suit. So I keep it simple. For “costumes,” I simply asked that all students wear a blue, green, and purple t-shirt. To keep the decor simple, we set up an art show in the gym, which I think helped make it seem more like an arts showcase than another music concert. 

Overall, this Spring Showcase was such a rewarding experience for both my students and me. I loved creating a performance that highlighted the music-making we do every day in class while giving students opportunities to sing, move, play instruments, and work together in new ways. It may have looked different from our traditional concerts, but seeing the students’ excitement and confidence on stage made all the extra planning worthwhile. I already have ideas for next year’s showcase, and I can’t wait to continue building this tradition!

Enjoy! 
Jayna