Simon Sings!

Think Simon Says, but to help the kids think about the difference between singing voice and speaking voice.

You don't use the words Simon Says at all.  You simply give an instruction either using your singing voice or your speaking voice. The students are only to follow the instructions you SING, not the ones you speak in the game. If a student follows a direction you SPEAK, they're out and they sit down!

I like to improvise in Dorian or Phrygian mode to give the directions in the game. You also can sing tonic and dominant patterns in major or minor tonality, later adding in subdominant patterns. The purpose is for the kids to practice and for you to assess how they're doing with hearing the difference between singing and speaking voice!



Extension:

If my students are REALLY good at hearing singing vs. speaking (which my K and 1st graders are!), I make it even trickier for them!  If I sing the directions on the RESTING TONE, they should follow them, but if I sing the directions on ANY OTHER NOTE, they shouldn't follow them!  This helps me assess whether students are truly audiating which pitch is the resting tone!

Holiday hello song!

based on "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." Excellent for kids to move with flow to! Access the Noteflight notation of the song here.

Frozen outtakes: Mixolydian round!

"Spring Pageant" from Frozen's outtakes is a GREAT Mixolydian round for kids!  See the first minute of the video above.  In my 2nd grade classes this year, we used just the first stanza (ending at the first "Spring's good and winter's bad"). We also sang it in E major to fit the students' voices better than the original C major.


Here's what my students did with this song:

• listened to the original recording, imagining the characters from Frozen singing it
• created macrobeat movements as if we were different Frozen characters (your students will have zillions of ideas for this!)
• used rhythm sticks on the beat pretending they were Frozen characters: make your rhythm stick Olaf plodding through the snow, Cristoff reining in the reindeer on the beat, Elsa creating snow....
• sang "Brr" on the resting tone as an ostinato; the kids on the ostinato and me on the melody
• sang "Ding-dong" on scale degrees 5-1 as an ostinato, as well as other tonic ostinati using the words "ding-dong" or "ding-ding-dong"
• split the class in half, with half the class singing an ostinato and half the class singing the melody
• sang the song in a round with them going first and me going second, then reverse
• sang the song in a round, just the students without me (in 2 parts; for 2nd grade I was very impressed!!)
• played ostinati on Orff instruments with the song
• the students composed their own 4-beat ostinati on Orff instruments using tonic pitches

Beethoven Symphony No. 7 Listening Lesson + Rhythm Reading

Got this lesson from my AWESOME mentor teacher. I made the slides though. ;)

Lesson plan:

Have students read the rhythms on the first 4 slides. 

(Download the slide show for free here.)

Then turn to the 5th one and have students read through the line of music after giving them a little background info on who Beethoven was. 

Then students listen to the beginning of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, Movement 2. Can they hear the rhythm they just read in the music?  

Pause the music and have the students tap the rhythm on their laps as they follow along with you pointing to the rhythm.  

Pause the music again, and have the students come up with a different place on their body to tap the rhythm. They tap the rhythm again as you point to the notes on the projector or SMART board.

Then ask for student volunteers; who thinks they've followed along with the notes so well they can point to them for the class?  The student leader points to the notes, and everyone else follows along with the notation, moving to the rhythm in another new way. 

Continue until the song changes to a new section (at 2:45 in the youtube recording linked to above). Tell the students to stop the movement when they hear the music change to a different rhythm and tonality.

All Around the Daffodils game

Materials:  2 fake daffodils

Students stand in a circle, holding hands up. Two students get fake daffodils that they will give to other students. The 2 students weave in and out of the circle, finally landing in front of someone at the end of the song. The person they each land in front of sings the resting tone of the song and gets the daffodil. Then they weave in and out of the circle, landing in front of someone else!




Alternative movement from http://www.letsplaykidsmusic.com/easter-spring-song-daffodils/ :

The children stand in a circle and hold hands up high to form arches or windows. One child  is chosen to hold the small bunch of (fake) daffodils, and starts to weave in and out of the windows. As the words ‘just choose me!’ are sung, the first child takes the hand of whoever is the closest, and then the two children carry on going in and out of the windows. The song is repeated until all the children are holding hands in a long snake, an adult can make a bridge against the wall, and then they all go round and under the bridge for a last time.  

Hiding Eggs: Easter song and game!

Easter Game:

Teacher passes out plastic Easter eggs, one per child.  Students can hide them in one of 4 places:  in their lap, behind their back, in their hands, or in the bottom of their pant leg.  Teacher turns away from the class and sings the song as students hide their eggs (in my classes, we only used verse 1).  The teacher turns back toward the class when the song is over, and guesses where one student's egg is.  Then that student sings the resting tone of the song.

If the teacher gets it right, the teacher gets 1 point.

If the teacher gets it wrong, the class gets 1 point.

If the student uses their best singing voice for the resting tone, the class gets 1 point.

If anyone in the class is talking during the music, the teacher gets 1 point. ;)

Then the students hide their eggs again as the teacher turns away and sings the song.  The teacher guesses another student's egg's hiding place, and that student sings the resting tone. The game continues until either the teacher or the class get to 10 points! Whoever gets there first wins! 

Side note: Kindergarteners love this because they love tricking the teacher and beating the teacher in a game!  And as long as my students aren't talking, giving me points, the class pretty much always wins. :)

Pirates of the Caribbean listening activity!

Download the listening worksheet here (free and editable!!!).

Pirates of the Caribbean Theme Song, Hans Zimmer

link to track used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUnrWo6z9WY. Stop the music at the awkward edit at 2:19.

Activities leading up to this:

• Learning Sequence Activities in triple meter
• Songs in triple meter
• The “poison rhythm” game where students have to remember the main rhythmic motive of the song and not repeat it or they’re out J

1.  Have students chant the main rhythmic motive on solfege after me, showing the weighted articulation using a fist gesture on macrobeats in the air as they chant.  (The motion is as if they’re using a hammer in the air.) Showing them the rhythm on the board, have students echo it looking at the notation. Have them identify if the rhythm is in duple or triple meter (or other) (triple).  We’ll call this the pirates theme.

2. Listen to the first A section with the students, pausing after every time the rhythmic motive happens to point it out or to ask students if it happened in what they just heard. If they need help hearing it, have them whisper-chant the motive as they listen to those measures again.

3.  Hand out the call chart, clipboards, and pencils.   Ask them to keep tally in the blanks next to “A” of how many times they hear the pirates theme, and follow along with the beat with their finger in the other sections. Listen and call out the following sections at these times:

A: at 4 seconds

Waves: at 38 seconds

B: at 45 seconds

Waves: at 59 seconds

A: at 1:11

Waves: at 1:47

B: at 1:52

Waves: 2:06-2:19.

4.  Ask them to listen again to check their tallies (at least once more here). Tell them this time before they start that in B the articulation changes—see if they can listen for that change and describe it afterward.

5.  Ask for the answers to your questions:  number of times for pirate motive in each A section, what happened to articulation at B (we’ll call it the smooth sailing section after they answer).

6.  Listen again and count together each time the pirate motive comes.

Extension: students come up with moves they could do on beat for the different sections J

Resources for tracking Learning Sequence Activities

My administrators LOVE how LSAs differentiate instruction by students' aptitudes, and how LSAs not only help sequence students' learning but also help assess students' learning.

I keep track of students' progress in the LSAs on my iPad.  For instructions on how to use an iPad to track LSAs, scroll down to the middle of this page on Jennifer Bailey's blog.

Don't have an iPad? No problem. You can put these downloads into a binder too and mark on them with a pencil.


Download the FREE, editable Excel file for tracking your students' LSA progress here. 

After the students take their aptitude tests, I color-code their seating chart by aptitude. (By the way - these seats aren't desks or chairs, they're "squad seats" where students are sitting on the floor in rows.)

• A student whose name has a purple background has a high rhythm aptitude.
• A student whose name has an orange background has a low rhythm aptitude.
• A student whose name has blue type has a high tonal aptitude.
• A student whose name has red type has a low tonal aptitude.
• A student whose name has black type and a white background has average tonal and rhythm aptitude.

As the class is doing their LSA, I mark each student's progress. I mark rhythm LSAs above the student's name and tonal LSAs below.

I mark a vertical line for teaching mode, then the horizontal line crossing it for evaluation mode. If a student wasn't quite successful in one pattern, I put a tick mark instead of a horizontal line (see Luna, Amelia, Ghieth, and Anaija in this sample below).

Here is a SAMPLE chart --it's not actually how students performed on a given LSA, or their actual aptitudes. This is about how it would look after 1 day on the tonal LSA and 1 day on the rhythm LSA.

So for example, on this chart (again, not real):

• Grace Zelenak chanted the rhythm LSA's Easy pattern in teaching and evaluation mode, and the Medium pattern in teaching mode.
• Ian Strachan chanted the rhythm LSA's Easy and Medium patterns in teaching and evaluation mode.
• Anaija Herring successfully chanted the Easy pattern in teaching mode and evaluation mode and the Medium pattern in teaching mode, but had trouble with her first attempt at Medium pattern in evaluation mode.
• Ryan Murphy has performed the rhythm LSA Easy pattern in teaching mode, and the tonal LSA Easy pattern in teaching and evaluation mode.
• Amelia Smith has had two unsuccessful attempts at evaluation mode on the rhythm LSA's Easy pattern.
• Luna Shkembi has had one unsuccessful attempt at evaluation mode on the tonal LSA's Easy pattern.
• etc. 

I also write which LSA we're on at the bottom of the seating chart, which streamlines the process during class so I know exactly which one we're doing (all my classes seem to progress at different rates)!

It's a seating chart color-coded by aptitude!!!! (same download as above.)

Paper skates!

Around the holidays (and Olympic season this past year!), at the end of class I occasionally give my younger grades the opportunity to ice skate in music class!  I take paper from the recycling bin, cut it in half, and each half of the paper is a skate that the student gets to pretend to skate on.

I put on a song like "Skating" by Vince Guaraldi, and have a couple helpers help me pass out 2 skates per person. Students have to listen to the music as they move to keep their skates!

Clap Your Hands! Hello song

A Dorian, triple meter hello song!  Could also be used as a non-hello song.  Students clap 3 times after they sing "hands," and stamp 3 times after they sing "stomp."  So it basically is "Clap your hands clap clap clap, stomp your feet stomp stomp stomp." Enjoy! :)

Hello Song in 10/8 meter

Another good hello song for kids to move with flow to. Access the Noteflight notation of the song here.

Wake Up! Locrian song + rhythmic improv

Songs used: Slow Locrian song from Experimental Songs and Chants without Words and Wake Up! chant from Music Play

My kindergarteners LOVED this activity this year and would always beg for us to keep going longer!! 

Musical concepts covered in this lesson:

• exposure to Locrian tonality, duple meter, and triple meter
• vocal exploration (they looooove the tongue trill at the end of the song
• AB/AAB form
• 2 meters and 2 tempi, duple and triple + fast and slow
• piano and forte
• flow with pulsations
• rhythmic improvisation

Lesson:

• Tell the students to lean their heads onto their hands and close their eyes, pretending to sleep. Sing the slow part of the song, gently rocking back and forth on macrobeats. At the fast part of the song, use exaggerated facial expressions and large flicking movements on macrobeats (flow with pulsations) to "wake up." Pretend to stretch from high to low as you do the tongue trill at the end.

• After the song is over, pick one student who was keeping the beat well to come into the middle. As you sing the song again, their job is to audiate their own rhythm pattern in triple meter. Give examples. They lie in the middle of the circle and pretend to sleep, then wake up, then chant their rhythm pattern on "BA." 

• That student looks for someone who is really trying their best (or listening well, or keeping the beat well, or moving with flow well, etc.) to be the next improviser. This incentive really motivates all the students to try their best, knowing they may get a turn soon!

Variations/Extensions:

• Use a cat puppet and a mouse puppet. Tell the students during the song, one of them will move up and down to the macrobeat, and the other to the microbeat. For example, move the cat during the fast section to the eighth notes (microbeat), and move the mouse during the slow section to the dotted quarter notes (macrobeat).     You can also use the two animals to show two different dynamic levels during the two parts of the song.  Which animal was singing piano, and which one was singing forte?

• Have the student in the middle improvise rhythms in a Q&A rhythm "conversation" with you. Making sure the triple meter tempo you chanted the song isn't TOO fast, you chant one pattern, and they chant something different back to you.

***What Do You Do With a Drowsy Sailor?***
 This activity can also be done with the song "Drunken Sailor," replacing the word "drunken" with "drowsy." I did Drowsy Sailor with 3rd and 4th graders, who loved it and would choose it on music choice day when they had the option between different activities!

For Drowsy Sailor, students stand in the circle, moving the macrobeat in their heels and tapping the microbeat on their shoulders. On the words, "Way, hey, and up," students do a move that they as a class created (my students like moving one arm up and accenting the word "up").

One person is lying in the middle of the circle, and starts to wake up at the words "Way, hey, and up." After the song is over, they improvise a rhythm in duple meter using syllables, such as DU-DE DU, DU-DE DU.

Concert Save-the-Date FREE EDITABLE DOWNLOADS

Looking for a cute way to tell students' parents you have a concert coming up? Download these two editable templates for concert "save-the-dates" here:

1. Top save-the-date

2. Bottom save-the-date