Locrian Jam song!

This song works well with movement activities. Students explore Laban efforts around the room in self-space after spinning our "movement spinner." Another activity for the song: A student with a sign that has Macrobeat written on one side and Microbeat on the other turns the sign to whatever beat they want the class to move to, switching every 4-8 beats. This is also a fun song to have students try snapping on beats 2 and 4, or for students to have a partner that they share a rhythm stick with, swaying side to side or back and forth on macrobeats or microbeats, with each student holding one end of the rhythm stick.


2017 addition: 
Here is an optional B section that you could use for activities such as circle dances or Laban movement opposites! Still swung. :)

Shake the Papaya Down: Visual, Chord root rhythm writing worksheet, and Garage Band projects

Lyrics and chord roots visual

Shake the Papaya Down lyrics and chord roots visual: you can download the free and editable Microsoft Word is here.

Shake the Papaya Down chord root rhythm worksheet: you can download the PDF for free here.

This is a great song for upper elementary because it has 3 partner songs, and the chord roots have I IV V I. You can have students sing the chord roots, label them as tonic, subdominant, and dominant, improvise rhythms over the chord roots, and even improvise with the chord tones.  After my 4th graders did their chord root rhythm composition, they worked with partners on a Garage Band project where they picked an instrument to play the chords, and they recorded themselves singing the partner  songs and chord root ostinato they composed.

Video of 2nd graders reading triple meter rhythms

Students are reading rhythms from the St. Patrick's Day shamrocks that are posted on this blog!

Shamrock triple meter rhythms to read!

See here for shamrocks with 6/8 rhythms!  They are all macrobeat/microbeat rhythms, including all of 3 patterns from the first triple meter LSA.

Print on green paper and laminate!  Here's what my 2nd graders did with the shamrocks this year:

• They read the patterns together by the SMART board first, then they went to stand in the circle and I spread the shamrocks out around the circle. 

• You can use any triple meter Irish song with this activity. We used "Leprechaun, Dance for Me" changing the words so they said, "Look at the shamrock, what do you see? Leprechaun, leprechaun, read for me."  During the song, the students did a real Irish dance movement (hop-step,step,step, hop-step,step,step) to move counterclockwise in the circle.

• When the A section with words ended, students stopped the movement around the circle. While the B section without words was going, students looked at the shamrock closest to where they were standing and audiated their rhythm. When the song was over, I would chant one of the rhythms.  If that was the rhythm on a shamrock a student was standing closest to, their job was to repeat the rhythm.  Hold up the shamrock and ask the class if they agree with how those students read the rhythm.  Repeat until all rhythms have been read!

Solfege Readers for Lowell Mason's Oh, Music

I'm doing basic sight singing with my 4th-5th grade choir. These readers takes a simplified version of each line of the song "Oh, Music" by Lowell Mason and gradually make the sight singing more like the real line of the song until singers can read the full line on solfege. Here is the song if you need to reference it.

Here is the reader for the first line:

Line 1:
Get the free PDF version here.
Get the free Noteflight notation (which you can copy to your Noteflight account and edit) here.


Here is the reader for the second line:

Line 2:
Get the free PDF version here.
Get the free Noteflight notation (which you can copy to your Noteflight account and edit) here.



Here is the reader for the final line:

Line 3:
Get the free PDF version here.
Get the free Noteflight notation (which you can copy to your Noteflight account and edit) here.


"Oh, Music" is also a good song to have your students work on tonic and dominant chord tone harmonies, and is of course a 3-part round. So many possibilities!

Music reading with Are You Sleeping: Free SMART board file!!!

My student growth goal this year is for my 4th graders to improve in basic sight singing skills. Here is a free SMART Notebook file with several activities for students to do with the notation of the song Are You Sleeping/Frere Jacques.

Here are some of the activities students do with the notation of Are You Sleeping:

match each line of notation to the correct word

look at the notation and figure out what song it is, sharing musical clues from the notation that helped them figure it out

read and sing an ascending major scale in F major and D major

circle the mistakes in each line

Sample pictures of some of the slides:

Download the file here!