High vs. Low Stories A wonderful idea for continuing with high and low practice is telling your students some familiar folk tales. I started with telling my students the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I tried to be as dramatic as possible while retelling this story and each of the three bears had a different kind of voice. Papa bear had a low voice, Mama bear had a middle voice, and Baby Bear had a high voice. (Goldilocks also had a high voice.) At the end of the story, I asked how they knew different characters were speaking? They explained that I changed my voice. Then I asked them how I changed my voice. Some may think you were louder or softer with different voices. To show the difference I would use my Baby Bear and Papa Bear voices and speak quietly and then loudly. This helped them realize this was not the difference between my voices. After explaining, I changed my voice between high and low, I asked students who had the highest voice and who had the lowest voice. Another day I told students the story of the The Three Little Pigs. After telling the story students were able to pick out the high and low voices quickly. We practiced speaking in our high pig voices and our low wolf voice. The greatest part about using these stories is you already built a strong foundation you can come back to. When students are sure if something sounds high or low say "Does it sound like Baby Bear? Or does it sound like Papa Bear?" Some students may still struggle with it at the beginning, but with constant repetition and examples they will start to get it. High vs. Low Videos My students *LOVE* watching music videos and I have put together quite a list of music videos I show for different concepts. One day I was showing a video and I realized that it could be more high and low practice. I had students listen and tell me, which character is singing the lowest? Which is singing the highest? The students had a great time with identifying the high and low singers and I was amazed that my more advanced students could even pick out small differences in high and low. They even caught things in the videos that I didn't. I started with showing students a video of Cookie Monster and a video of Elmo. I asked students which character has a high voice and which has a low voice. Then I gave them a little more of a challenge, by figuring out who has the high and low voices in this video: Then the ultimate challenge! I stopped after each number (starting on 2) and asked who had the highest/lowest voice. This is difficult for some, but this is also the one that my students really impressed me with. Would you like to see more about teaching high and low? Check out my last blog post about Preparing High and Low Or look out for more posts about high and low COMING SOON Clip art credits - Whimsy Clips & Educlips