Cesar Mendoza - The Fabulous Song

The Fabulous Song, written by Don Gillmor and illustrated Marie-Louise Gay, is a book about Frederic's musical journey. His parents named him after a famous pianist, Frederic Chopin. His parents and all his relatives thought that he was going to be very musical, but they were proven wrong. The book narrates his many musical studies. Frederic studied piano, violin, clarinet, oboe, xylophone, trumpet, and many more instruments commonly found in the orchestra. One night, his sister played a concert with an orchestra and Frederic felt a connection with what the conductor was doing. At his birthday party, all of his relatives brought instruments and were arguing as to which song they would play for Frederic. He got upset at what was going on so he set order and mimicked what the conductor did with the orchestra. He had found his musical passion which was conducting and composing. This book is could be taught with a DR-TA approach. Selecting various stop points for the book and having students predict what was going to happen next would be very helpful for their comprehension. There are some musical terms such as conductor that could be added to a Word Wall. This would be done to help a 3rd to 5th grade general music class remember this term for the remainder of the year.