How to teach rhythm in elementary music class for first year general music teachers. We're going step by step through how to teach rhythm!

Miss Mary Mack

Surprise!!! In my recent holiday fever I bet you thought this would be a holiday post! But it's not. This is a post that's been a long time coming. Back in September, my third graders learned tika-tika. One of my favorite tika-tika songs is this one: There are a few activities that I do with this song. Name game: we replace "Dinah" with names of students in our class. Improvisation game: instead of "strumming on the old banjo,"we put other things the first time, we go around the circle and sing it "Name Game" style (see #1) but I change the ending to various things. I.e.: "playing on the Nintendo," "eating a burrito," "talking on the telephone," "listening to the radio," "dancing a funky disco," "talking to your daddy-o", etc. depending on the class we might have to do it again with me modeling this. If not, then they make up something they are doing with the only requirement being that it rhymes and they can make it fit within the beats of the song (for me, it's okay if they change the rhythm. That's part of improvisation) Listening game Formation: standing circle with one student in the middle who is blindfolded. Once the student in the middle is blindfolded, we silently make a hole in the circle. This is the "door" to Dinah's house. I elaborate through a story that Dinah has a "magically musical house" because the walls sing. All the standing students are the walls of Dina's house. The blindfolded student must find the door to the house by walking around the inside of the circle and listening to where there is no singing. Once they "hear" where the door is they walk towards it until they are out of the "house." They know when they have made it out of the house because their classmates clap for them. This is a cue for them to stop moving so they don't run into a wall or equipment and to remove their blindfold. This year I had a new idea for Dinah's house and that was to build a wall in Dinah's house. I sent out a notice in our school's weekly announcement that the music room was collecting EMPTY SQUARE tissue boxes. I was able to collect a lot, to date I have collected over 100. My goal was 80 as that would give me 5 sets of 16 boxes. I wrapped the boxes in white butcher paper (you know, that roll paper that is in your school's work room). I then printed out the following rhythms ta, ti-ti, ta-rest & tika-tika using MusicEd font (really, I do NOT work for them, I just LOVE their product!). I laminated these rhythms and then using packaging tape I taped them and wrapped the boxes so that each box had one of those rhythms on each side (there is NO rhythm on the top or the bottom of the box- if there was the boxes would not stack evenly). Once the boxes were assembled, as a class, we derived the rhythm of "Dinah's House" (a.k.a. the rhythm to the song "Dinah"). Here's a picture of what that looked like: Like I mentioned above, I've collect just over 100 boxes and my goal was 80. Since I had 96 boxes that gave me 6 sets of 16 boxes. The student then got into groups of 4-5 with each group getting 16 blocks. Their directions were to build a wall of rhythm. I didn't care what their rhythms were but they had to be four beat across and stacked 4 high. The only other rule (besides the etiquette required with this: i.e. do not fall on the boxes, do not punch the boxes, etc.) was that before they knocked down their wall they had to perform their wall for me. Here are a few sample walls: This activity ending up being more fun then I ever anticipated it AND lend itself to some AMAZING teaching opportunities. First of all, it introduced/reinforced direction of note-heads related to note-stems. SO many times when dealing with rhythm we write the stems up and neglect to write rhythms with the stems down. Here's an example where they DID put a note stem going down (you'll notice that ALL the other groups have their stems going up. . . guess what I need to teach more of. .. stems going down!): Secondly, it was a GREAT chance for part work. This group did it before I even asked them too- when I came over to hear their wall, they were ready to read it for me, with the boys reading one side of the wall and the girls reading the other side, AT THE SAME TIME. As a teacher, this was A.MAZ.ING and fun to see!: During the second lesson I encouraged all of my classes to have their groups perform both sides of the wall at the same time: One class took the part work so far as to put all of their block together to create four walls. They divided themselves into four groups. Each group practiced their wall individually and then performed their wall for everyone. After that, they tried clapping and saying all four of the walls together. This was pretty tricky, but after a few tries they did it, they felt very successful and had a GREAT time figuring it out: Of course this activity did produce some things I suspected. Some groups did patterns: Every class had at least one group that made a wall of rests: This one was funny, it was their spin on the wall of rest: And this group had a good time with all those tika-tikas! This was a great learning activity for me. It really reminded me of how much more I need to do with small group work, improvisation and composition!

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My kinders are starting to learn about long and short sounds. This is the last thing I need to teach for analysis this year. We have already learned about high vs. low, fast vs. slow, and loud vs. soft. To learn about long and short I like to use the patterns tiptoe, walk, and jump. Tip-toe represents the two shortest sounds as it gets two sounds in the beat. Walk represents the one beat sound, and jump represents the longest sound (two beats). Jump, jumps from one beat to another. In order to practice this I normally have students jumping, tiptoeing and walking by their chairs for several days. Then I give them symbols to represent the three actions: two small dots for tip-toe, one short line for walk, and an upside down U for jump. I have students create their own patterns on the board with these symbols and we perform the actions together as a class. This year I created a mini-composition for all the kids to work on, so EVERYONE gets a chance to create their own long and short patterns. There are only a few rules to their compositions. They have to create two lines of four beat patterns. (This means that the two dots of tip-toe must go together in a beat. You cannot separate them!) Jump has to take up two beats and you can only put a jump to beats 1 and 2, 2 and 3, or 3 and 4. (Otherwise you jump off the edge!) It is much easier to explain all of this visually to my kinders and they had no problem understanding what they needed to do. Today, all my kinders created their own compositions and performed them for their classmates. Here are some pictures of finished compositions! If you would like to use this composition in your own classroom, this is a forever freebie in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store and you can find it HERE. Please leave a rating and feedback if you use it, but please remember that it is free and nothing fancy by any means. Just something cute and simple! (Click the follow me link, if you haven't already, to be updated on all my future products and told about my special followers only deals.) That's all for now!

Your elementary music students will absolutely love this free download of milk and cookies kaboom game! It is a center favorite it my room!

I'm back with another lesson idea for using literature to introduce and practice music concepts with lower elementary students! Today's post is on a book that is brand new to me this year: a wonderful book by Ann McGovern called "Too Much Noise". *this post contains affiliate links* I just used this book this past week (you can get it on Amazon here) with first grade to review loud and soft, introduce the vocabulary forte and piano, and review classroom instrument names and playing technique. You could use this book with any lower elementary grade to practice or introduce dynamics and/or timbre. The first thing we did was read the story. This book is a wonderful story about a man who thinks the quiet sounds in his house are too loud, who gets a bunch of loud animals at the advice of the town's wise man, and then realizes how quiet his house actually is when he gets rid of all of the animals. The illustrations are wonderful and there are several sound words in the story- the swishing of the wind, the mooing of the cow- which I had the students say with me as I read. At the end of the book, I asked the students to retell the story, and then asked them which sounds were loud and which were quiet (or soft. I know some teachers care deeply about which word you use- I use them both interchangeably but will use "quiet" in this post for consistency's sake). We practiced saying the animal sounds loudly and the house sounds quietly. Since I was using the book to introduce the vocabulary words "forte" and "piano", I introduced those words here, having the students say the words loudly and quietly, respectively. That was the end of the first 30-minute lesson. In the next lesson, we reviewed the basic story line, reviewed the words "forte" and "piano", and I had students sort the sound words into categories of forte and piano. I did this on my interactive whiteboard, but you could also do this on a regular whiteboard and just write the words, or print the words on cards and have them sort as a class or in small groups. Then I told the students that I wanted to use instruments for each of the sounds instead of our voices. We quickly reviewed the classroom instruments we used last year, including small percussion and barred instruments, and for each discussed whether the instrument could produce sounds that are forte, piano, or both (An egg shaker, for example, is hard to play forte, but a cowbell, on the other hand, is difficult to play quietly, although it can be done. A hand drum could easily be used for either forte or piano). Once we reviewed the instruments, the students chose one instrument to represent each sound, and I assigned a few students to each one. Then we read the story again, this time playing the appropriate instrument each time the sound came up in the story. I reminded the students before we started that they should play their instruments at the appropriate dynamic level that we had discussed, but that they should never play over the sound of any other instrument or my reading. This lesson was a great way to review dynamics and instrument names, give the students a chance to play some instruments, and introduce forte and piano. Have you ever used this book in your music classes? I would love to hear your ideas as well- leave a comment! If you want to see some of the other lessons I teach with children's literature, click here.

Are you needing some fun, exciting, and engaging supplemental activities to check your students comprehension/understanding of the fabulous Nutcracker unit you are studying in your classes? This resources is just what you are looking for. Here is a list of what you will receive when purchasing thi...

One of my absolute favorite lessons each year goes along with the children's book, The Mitten, by Jan Brett. I got this idea from my mentor teacher years ago and have adapted it and tweaked it over the years. I use it as a way to culminate the major units that my first graders have been studying throughout the year - rhythm patterns and basic mallet skills. It is also a great way to ease them into preparing for their Spring Musical. First, I read the story to the students and we discuss the various characters in the book. For each character, we learn a rhythm pattern and I have the students practice playing the rhythms on various percussion instruments. Then, I teach the students a song that goes with the book. We add a simple bordun and an octave glockenspiel part at the end of each phrase. Finally, we add some actors! I choose students to represent each character and they follow the narration of the book. I created some masks that I printed from Jan Brett's website, laminated them, and added some elastic bands. I used a cheap white sheet and cut it into the shape of a mitten for the actors to sit on top of during their performance. After the students have practiced all of the parts, we put together a performance that we show to their classroom teacher. As the story is read, one student plays the rhythm pattern on the percussion instrument while that character "gets into" the mitten. When the bear sneezes in the story, the actors toss the mitten up into the air and pretend to fall into the snow while the percussionists play all together. We begin and end the performance with our mitten song accompanied by the mallet instruments. If you have larger classes, you can add actors for Nicki and his grandmother, Baba. You can also double instrument parts and even add sound effects on the sneeze part (think: crank, vibraslap, slapstick, etc.) This activity makes a great "informance" piece at PTO meetings or other school events. The students LOVE it and it is definitely a crowd-pleaser for teachers, too. Fun and learning - that's how we roll at HSES! :)

9/2/15*** See information on this post on my new website at AT https://artsintersection.wordpress.com/2015/09/02/teaching-high-and-low-fae...

I have been using this wonderful book by Karma Wilson with my kindergarten and first grade students for almost a decade now and it is still one of my favorites! This is a great lesson for introducing and exploring the concepts of timbre / tone color, sound sources, instruments (and their names), sound effects, and communicating meaning and emotion through music / sound. *this post contains affiliate links* First of all, the book itself is wonderful. If you aren't familiar with it, please go check it out. Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman have also done several other books featuring the Bear as the main character (like "Bear Stays Up" and "Bear Feels Sick", plus many more), so I've had homeroom teachers use some of the other books for read-aloud's in their class after the students did the lesson with me. You can get the book on Amazon here: The story includes many different interesting sounds that are easy for younger students to identify, so this is a great way to introduce students to the idea of sound effects or soundscapes. In my lesson, I start off by reading the book and ask students to find the one sound that is repeated over and over. Usually they know what it is before I even read it (it's in the title and all!), and they say the repeated line, "but the bear snores on" with me throughout the story. Once we've read the story, I ask the students to remember other sounds they heard in the story. Then we go through each page of the book and identify all the sounds we can find. I put a sticky note next to each one they choose. Since I am usually doing this with multiple classes in a grade level at the same time, I use different colored sticky notes for each class. When I'm having them identify the sounds, I don't show them the page so they aren't swayed by the other class' opinions. It's always interesting to see what the students pick- some pick more abstract items like the sun peeking up, while others stick strictly to sounds that are identified in words in the story. Before the next class period, I write down the names of students on each sticky note (I usually just do a simple rotation through all of the names by seating chart). The whole class does the sound of the bear snoring together (which helps keep students engaged in between turns). In the second lesson, I have each student choose how they will make each of their sounds. If I know they have a good understanding of timbre and sound sources, I tell them they have to use one of each different sound source category (instruments, voice, body percussion, found sound/object). I make a small note to myself of what they choose on the same sticky notes (like "clap", "pencil on floor", or "guiro"). The next class period we make a video recording of our story. I read the story out loud and the students add their sound effects when I get to each of their parts. Bonus concept: when they do the snoring sound together, I have them keep snoring while my hand is open, then I do the circular conducting motion and close my hand to have them stop. The students love putting their story together, and I have consistently gotten positive and enthusiastic feedback from parents, homeroom teachers, and librarians too! Have you ever used this book in your music classroom? I would love to hear your ideas in the comments.

We know a beat is steady, and a rhythm is a combination of long and short sounds. We've been working so hard on keeping a steady beat, and n...

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Sing, sing, sing! I want my students to experience beautiful, in-tune singing and I am always on the lookout for songs with solos. I know students are more successful in pitch matching when they sing unaccompanied and have opportunities to sing alone. While I use several songs with solos in the primary grades, I don't use as many in the older grades. Here is one that has been very successful with my older students. I often start with several knots tied in the rope so that a few students are singing the solo, (which cuts down on the initial fear factor for the singers.) I learned this song from my wonderful Level III teacher, Liz Arcaro. Once a student has sung a solo (or duet, or trio, depending on how many knots I tie in the rope,) they go to a barred instrument and accompany with a simple bourdon on C and G. What are some of your favorite songs with solos?

In this SMARTBoard Music Lesson: I Have 4 Voices, students explore their Talking, Whispering, Yelling (Outside), and Singing voices. Their voices are associated with forte and piano. Interactive activities are included. Links support the lesson concepts

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Using our classroom lap packs and dry erase markers second graders have been working on writing rhythms that they hear down using correct notation. Right now we are working with ta and titi (quarter notes and eighth note pairs).

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A music education blog with lesson plans and ideas for the elementary music classroom.

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Take a deep dive into music with this colorful, fun so-mi writing activity! Choose between two staff styles. The half-page, double-sided 2-line staff and 3-line staff is great for narrowing your students' focus and setting them up for success! Use the 2-line staff and then flip it over to progress to the 3-line staff! Or for those that prefer the traditional 5-line staff, choose the full-page staff and use the acrylic "so" to label the desired line or space. Please read the following carefully before you select your option. 2 line/3 line staff option includes: (4) 8.5"x 5.5" double-sided cards printed in on high-quality 100# glossy cardstock (30) acrylic fish (1) small storage box* with label 5 line staff option includes: (4) 11" x 8.5" single-sided cards printed on high-quality 100# glossy cardstock (4) acrylic "so" labels (30) acrylic fish (1) small storage box* with label Please note that the cards are not laminated. *Color of box may vary depending on inventory. Shipping is included in the pricing.

Learn how to practice rhythms with this budget-friendly and fun rhythm game in your elementary music classroom.

It's been such a great week in Kindergarten and First Grade Music! We've been experiencing steady beat with steady beat swords. The "swords" are actually swimming noodles that have been cut in half. First we listened to "Imperial March" from Star Wars and found patterns in the music that sounded like we should march, swing our steady beat swords and sneak around. Then we kept the steady beat by clapping one hand with our partner. Next we took that skill and transferred it to our steady beat swords. We clicked our steady beat swords together on the beat with our partner. As we listened to the song the next time we marched, light saber-ed to the beat and snuck around the galaxy in search of a new beat keeping partner. What fun! Read another blog post about steady beat swords HERE. Read another blog post about steady beat swords HERE.

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