Music education ideas, activities, games, and songs | Technology tips for the music classroom | Resources for the elementary music room.
I am linking up with Organized Chaos Fermata Friday for a linky party about some of our favorite activities, songs, tips, etc. I am going to link back to a few of my FAVORITE FALL songs and activities my kiddos can't get enough of right now! You can see all of them here! Apple Tree: Pass the Pumpkin:
Fall is certainly in the air here in North Carolina. While the days are still hot and sunny, mornings are crisp and cool. With this in mind, I thought it would be fun to sing about the change in seasons with my kindergartners! I started by asking if someone knew what season is coming up next. A few enthusiastic hands shot up. After we determined the next season is fall, I read a short book about fall. There are so many great options out there! Next we learned a song/game celebrating fall called "Fall is in the Air!" Students sit in a circle while three chosen students stand in the center of the circle and pick a fall object. I printed out pictures of a scarecrow, pumpkin, squirrel, acorn, pile of leaves, and sun flower. I did not have time to laminate my pictures this time around but will definitely do so in the future! The whole group sings this song while the three students "show off" their fall objects: Fall is in the air! s m s m s Fall is in the air! s m s m s Gather round, s s m Let us see! s s m What do you have here? s s m l s Students in the center of the circle are called on one by one to sing what they have with this response: I have a _______________. s m m s-m or just s depending on syllables The whole group responds immediately after with: She/he has a ________________. s m m s-m or just s depending on syllables This group response is a good sol mi reinforcer. Assessment I assessed students on their individual response with the following rubric: 4. Sings sol mi pattern in correct key 3. Sings sol mi pattern in tune but in a different key 2. Sings but does not sing sol mi pattern 1. Uses speaking voice, even with I sing, you sing prompt 0. Would not attempt to sing, even with I sing, you sing prompt
Here is a quick and easy play-along for the start of the 2014-2015 school year. The song is "Love Runs Out" performed by the group One Republic. There is much good news with this popular song, not the least of which it is in G dorian mode. Our Orff instruments are all set for this - all you'll need is B-flats and you're good to go! The other good news is the lyrics have no "bad words" so you're safe to use it completely in tact in your classroom. Please be sure to PURCHASE THE SONG before using this play-along. A $1.23 investment isn't much. Once you have it, you can use it as-is, there is no need to alter the key or tempo using a program such as Audacity. This song follows a very simple I, IV, V chord progression, but in case you're not quite clear on the chord changes, I've posted the beginning play-along below. Once you try it out, I'm sure you'll notice where the changes occur throughout the song. Feel free to add or subtract instruments at will. This is a fantastic review for students to see and hear the difference between BEAT and RHYTHM. The hand drum part (or any type of drums will do) clearly plays the steady beat. The other parts are playing a rhythm pattern (some more intricate than others). I did this with my students by having three groups that used the Boomwhacker colors - Green (the G minor chord) Red (the C major chord) Orange (the D minor chord). This was easier for them than having each student play all the chord changes. I placed the three colors on the board and pointed and called out the changes as the recording played. There is a part in the actual recording where the bass line moves from C to B-flat and then to G, but I have only written "the basics" here for you. Have fun!
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Choosing songs to teach from in the music room can be tricky business. For one thing, there are an infinite number of songs from which to choose. You can easily put your head down to think of one song to use in a lesson only to look up hours later with stacks of books and binders next to
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Looking for a fun music listening lesson for Fall that is nit the Four Seasons? Im Herbst is the perfect solution! It is dramatic and perfect for timbre!
Today I'm giving a glance into my first day of school lesson plans, from TK - 5th grade. In the first day of music class, students are arguably the most attentive they will be all year. This puts a unique pressure on the first day's lesson plan to set the tone for the rest of our time together.
Pete the Cat: Rocking in My School ShoesBuy Now We love Pete the Cat! Second graders have read/sung the book and watched Pete's Wheels on the Bus video. In the book Pete the Cat: Rocking in My School Shoes Pete does lots of great things at school like reading, writing, singing, painting, adding, playing and more. We brainstormed several things that we could do at school that had two syllables: learning, helping, walking, thinking, etc... We used these ideas to complete a rhythm song. If students finished early they could draw Pete the Cat. Here are some of my favorites! Useful Links: Teachers get a copy of the worksheet here: School Shoes Composing Worksheet Pete the Cat Rockin' in My School Shoes Video Pete the Cat Wheels on the Bus Video Download FREE Pete the Cat MP3s
I learned this song from my KTIP mentor, Alicia Franklin, during my first year teaching. I introduce this song in kindergarten and we sing it everyday when we line up. I sing the first note as a fermata and hold it until every student is joining in and doing their job to line up. There are hand motions to accompany the song. On the first word "my", we raise our hands in the air (this makes it easy to see who is actually paying attention in line and ready to sing the song). Then, we do what the song says. Phrase 1: place hands back Phrase 2: exaggerate good posture Phrase 3: take 2 fingers, point at eyes then straight ahead Phrase 4: hands return behind back Phrase 5: zip lips, pretend to put in pocket, hands return behind back, mouth is closed When the kids get to 1st grade, the song only makes guest appearances when we need help remembering how to line up or when I want to see if they can apply the musical concept we just learned. Using the Song For Assessment Assess Tempo If we learned about tempo that day, we may choose a tempo (largo, moderato, allegro) and sing our song accordingly. They may also get to line up to a tempo. I may ask them to show me allegro feet, largo feet, or moderato feet to line up. Depending on how much time is left in class, I may do this individually or in small groups. If I do it individually, I usually take notes in my grade book for a performance assessment. Older students can watch the conductor and respond to accelerandos and ritardandos. Assess Dynamics If we learned about dynamics that day, we may choose a dynamic level for the entire song (piano, mezzopiano, mezzoforte, forte) or watch the conductor to see how the dynamic levels change throughout the song. Older students can usually remember a pattern to assign different dynamic levels to each phrase. Similar to the game discussed above, sometimes we can line up with piano feet (tiptoeing) or forte feet (stomping). Again, depending on the time remaining in class, this is either done individually or in small groups and is sometimes used as a performance assessment. Assess Melody If we learned about melodic direction that day, we may use our hand levels to show the melodic contour. (That's why I like the simple shape of this melody going upward then downward.) If we discussed pitch, we may sing it in a high key or a low key. Assess Harmony If we learned about minor harmony (Halloween), we may choose to change the song to minor and make it sound spooky. (All the kids LOVE this!) Assess Timbre If we discussed different types of voices (speaking, whisper, calling, singing), we may choose to use different voices to use throughout the entire song, or we may change our voices for each phrase. I also have voice cards that I can hold up and show the students what to change to. (View the next post for printable voice cards.) Assess Rhythm If we discussed rhythm (long and short sounds), we may sing the song exaggerating note lengths in tenuto or staccato style. If we discussed a fermata, we may choose one or two words to have a fermata and sing those words really long. Coda These are just a few examples of how I use our line up song for assessment. Sometimes, instead of telling them how to sing it, I let the kids pick a variation to sing. Again, I only sing it every time with kindergarten; and they never get tired of singing it. It only appears occasionally with older grades. It appears sometimes as a warning to those not ready for the hall: "Do we HAVE to revisit kindergarten and sing the line-up song?" Their behavior is quickly corrected. Many older students LOVE the line up song, as it brings nostalgia from kindergarten. Even if you have a line-up song already in place, you could probably use these assessment strategies with your song as well. I would love to hear other ideas to use line-up songs as assessment tools. If you have some more ideas, please comment below.
Song Index
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Happy Thanksgiving week everyone! I know a lot of you are still in school so here's a fun song to use with your 1st graders . .. . and 2nd graders! I found it in Holidays and Special Days by Grace Nash and Janice Rapley during my college practicum classes and have used it every year. The kids eat it up! Here's the song: Now, this is NOT a folk song. But over the years I've accidentally changed the melody. Here's the way I sing it with my kiddos (and we sing it with swung eighth notes): I use this to aurally identify/reinforce quarter rests with my 1st graders. Other than that, we use it for expression and FUN. Here's the game: Formation: circle, with one student (the "farmer") on the outside of the circle and 2-3 turkeys in the middle. Action: as the song is sung, the farmer walks around the outside of the circle while the turkeys trot around the middle of the circle. At the end of the song the farmer chases the turkeys. Depending on where your students are in your movement sequence, you can have the students in the circle walk the beat while the song is sung with their arms acting as a fence. At the end, the students can choose to make their joined arms gates or leave their section of the fence closed. You can also add instruments. In Holidays and Special Days there are more elaborate Orff parts. I simplified it so my 1st and 2nd graders can play is successfully and independently. Here are a couple of my 1st graders playing it this year. It's a lot of fun and it's great to get some of those pre-holiday wiggles out: Liza Meyer's wrote a post that included this song a couple years ago. She notates it as la,-do at the beginning but my source uses so-mi. You can read her post by clicking here. This post also has a fun Thanksgiving song to the tune of Zum Gali Gali- it's a must do! Your older kiddos with LOVE it! Have a GREAT week everyone!
I'm linking up with some other wonderful music teacher bloggers today to share one of my favorite fall-themed music lesson. Make sure you check out all of the posts linked up at the end of this post- tons of great ideas have been shared already and I have actually used several in my classes already! One of my favorite songs for fall is "Autumn Leaves Are Falling": If somebody knows the source for this song, please let me know. This is another one of those songs that I picked up somewhere long ago and have no idea where it came from! I've done some research to no avail, but I would love to give credit if I can find the source! I love this song because it is in a minor key, and it perfectly captures the mood of fall leaves. I use this song with Kindergarten to practice steady beat. Usually I start by having students pat the beat on their legs while I sing, then after we discuss the words, they keep the beat while swaying their hands back and forth, gradually going from high to low (mimicking a falling leaf), then do the same with a scarf. After that I add instruments. This year I used hand bells and boomwhackers on D and A and had them play on the beat, but I have also used it in the past with barred instruments, as well as adding some simple rhythmic ostinati on unpitched percussion. The students love the song year after year, and I love having a song in a minor key to add to their repertoire. Do you have a favorite music lesson with a fall theme? Share your ideas by adding your blog post to the linky below! An InLinkz Link-up
Thanksgiving is coming soon. what are YOU thankful for. I, personally, am thankful that my theory teacher is at a conference and we missed two days of theory class. Ha ha! Just kidding... So here are a few Thanksgiving-oriented activities for your classes. If anyone knows the origin of this song, please let me know. To be honest, I can't remember from whom or where I learned it. The next song is obviously based on the tune of Zum Gali Gali. The change in text and the accompanying plate game I learned from my good friend, Dr. Michele Paise who is now a professor at Cumberland University in Tennessee. So all kudos for this one go to her. Thanks, Michele! Another extension could be the typical Orff idea of using word chains to create a larger rondo form. So small groups of children could create food word chains (Example: Turkey, mashed potatoes, hot biscuits, corn) to perform with body percussion and then with un-pitched percussion as small group compositions. The word chains are short, so they would have to repeat the chain at least 4 times to make it more substantial. So for instance a group could perform the chain twice with words and body percussion sounds, and then twice with only un-pitched percussion playing the rhythm of the word chain. Or they could layer in their words perhaps. One student could say and play corn over and over, then the person playing turkey could join in, then mashed potatoes, then hot biscuits. Let students be creative and come up with unique ways of performing their words chains. Don't insist that every group must do it exactly the same way. In what other subject in school can students be creative and make their own choices? The final performance would alternate singing the song with group 1 performing their word chain, then the song, then group 2 performing their word chain, and so on. Have a great week!
Looking for a fun music listening lesson for Fall that is nit the Four Seasons? Im Herbst is the perfect solution! It is dramatic and perfect for timbre!
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This is a chant that I used in my student teaching and I use it EVERY year with great success. My first graders are in full-fledged ta ti-ti practice and I like that this uses four different combinations of those rhythmic elements for each line. Here's the chant: I use this mainly as a reading/decoding exercise with my first graders. There are endless extension activities that you can do with this from adding instruments, vocal exploration warm-ups, part work using body percussion with beat vs. rhythm, etc.. In fact, Liza Meyers blogged about it a couple years ago and has a fabulous post where you can read some of her ideas by clicking here. Now, back to the decoding activity that I do. My students read the the chant from a poster that I made "back in the day" (you know, before these new fangled contraptions called LCD-Projectors, SMART boards and document cameras, lol!). Here it is: It's not high-tech but it gets the job done and the kids like the silly pictures. After they know the chant (not in the same lesson that they learn the chant), I have them listen for a specific rhythmic pattern. For example, I'll ask them if they hear the pattern ti-ti ta ti-ti ta. They decode that it's the ghost line. Then they read the chant, substituting the rhythm syllables for the decoded line WHILE listening for another rhythm pattern. This continues until they have aurally decoded the entire chant and perform the chant on rhythm syllables only. On another day, we will do a notational decoding. I have the rhythm patterns from the song (see below) printed out and cut into strips of paper so that there is only one phrase per strip of paper. Working in alone or in pairs (depending on your stage of practice or students' level of reading ability), they receive and envelope that contains all four rhythmic patterns. They then put the rhythm patterns in order to match the song. A fun extension activity is to have them arrange the strips however they like and perform them in that order. If you have students who need and extra challenge (you know, those kiddos that have been in piano a couple years or really pick up on things quickly) you can have them perform their rhythmic pattern while the rest of the group performs the "Miss White" chant. The other beautiful thing about this chant is that if you teach in a school that doesn't celebrate Halloween you can get away using it. It does use a ghost but it's pretty safe to use. :)
This is a fun singing game to do with your kinders. I learned it from Lamar Robertson and it can be found in the book that he co-authored with Ann Eisen, An American Methodology. This is a must have for your teaching library and worth EVERY penny!! If you don't have it put it on your Christmas/Hanukkah/Birthday list!! Here's the song: Action: One student is blindfolded and one student is given a small pumpkin. The class sings the first line all together. The blindfolded student sings the second line, "Who has the pumpkin, who has the pumpkin?" and the student with the pumpkin answers, "I have the pumpkin, I have the pumpkin." The student in the center then has three guesses as to who has the pumpkin. In the past I used a real pumpkin, you know those itty-bitty pumpkins that they have for decoration. But Target was THE place to get Halloween manipulatives this year (che! They had these pumpkin erasers that I used for the game this year: Now, I mentioned Target was THE place for Halloween manipulatives this year: they also has skeleton, black cat and ghost erasers. My son is one of my kindergartners and it's funny how much I learn from him. Well, one morning this week he found the skeletons and started singing "Let's hide the skeleton, let's hide the skeleton." So, this week we changed it up and switched the words. You could EASILY adapt this to work with any "theme or subject" you are doing. Here are a few ideas: November: use a small turkey December: a jingle bell January: a snow flake February: a Valentine March: a shamrock April: a rain drop May: a flower The possibilities are endless!! Back to the pumpkin erasers, what a great find! We also used them in third grade as a fun, different way to write rhythms that include tika-tika. A "different" way to write the same rhythm:
Teaching music with fun, tried & tested lessons, DIY classroom projects & ideas your students will love with Tracy King, the Bulletin Board Lady.
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Vocal exploration pathways are a great tool for students to use to warm up their voices and discover their head voice. My youngest students adore these activities, but my 4th-6th grade choir loves to use these as a warm-up. This set includes 15 pathways, 5 draw-your-own, and 2 worksheets, perfect fo...
I do not usually have very much student work to display since my students' "work" happens during our class performances. However, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to show off the 4th and 5th grade Stomp Projects. Each group completed a worksheet to show the rhythms they chose, the instruments they played, and an explanation of their performance. The students really enjoy finding their group's work in the display and checking out all of the pictures! Update: After many requests, I have decided to share my Stomp: Trash Percussion Group Project! Click here if you would like to download a copy. :)
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Hey, howdy, hello! Being the week of Halloween, ahem, HALLOWEEK, I am verklempt and schmaltzy and want to roll around in nostalgia like a pig in glorious mud. Do the holidays make you nostalgic/sen…
Happy Autumn everyone! Isn't this season great?! We are finally getting some colder weather where I live...so, feeling inspired, I wrote this original song. I use the song and movements with my kindergarteners. There are many "leaf" songs out there to use with this. For my first graders, I use three mini-lessons. I really like these because they connect so many concepts together (pitch, melody, melodic direction, high/low and ta/titi). The students use instruments, improvise sung melodies, and even create their own cute composition (see below). Students love to take compositions home to sing with family members. What a cool, festive creation to hang on the fridge! "Can you sing my fall song? " Composition You can download the song, lessons, worksheets, and rhythm cards here: Leaves
Welcome Back Teachers, When music centers began to be more popular, I wanted to give them a try in my music room. As I began to use music centers, I noticed that my students loved working in smaller
I'm a Mean Old Witch With a HAT! Halloween! (Both songs) There's No Such Thing as a Witch This week we have a primary act...
Hi all! I'm excited to be linking up with Aileen Miracle at Mrs. Miracle's Music room for this week's "Three Things". It's actually two things I did last week and one from this week since I forgot to record it last week, lol! First, my second graders have been prepping "la" and it will be presented this week. I only see them every 5th day so I need to choose song literature that has the current element that I'm teaching but also things I can bring back in the future. This little round that I learned from Tanya LeJeune is great because we can isolate "la" in the first couple phrases but bring it back for reading "do" later this year. This class was able to perform it as a two part round, yesterday's class was able to sing it as a 4 part round! Second, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Call-response songs for warm-ups. Not only does it give them a chance for active listening it also gives me a chance for a really fast and quick vocal assessment. I sometimes will have them respond as a class or sometimes in small groups and often times as solos. This little guy asked if he could be the leader! So, why not?! Finally, this was a fun vocal exploration that we did with both kinder and 1st grade. I used my pig popper, she looks like this (and her name is Petunia, lol!): One of the students pops the ball and the rest track the ball with their fingers and follow it with their voices. Last week I also got to go on my daughter's kindergarten field trip to the Pumpkin Patch. Here's a selfie of us with her two buddies that were in our group: And here's my little peanut on the wagon and in the pumpkin patch: This is one of my favorite times of year: first, all things pumpkin are yummy but also the song literature and vocal exploration is so rich! I can't wait to share some October fun things we're doing in my music class in the weeks to come! Thanks so much to Aileen for hosting the linky party! Make sure to check out all the other fun posts that are linked on her blog post!
