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!

Holiday hello song #2: based on Sing We Now of Christmas

A 5/8, secular, hello song based on the Dorian tune "Sing We Now of Christmas."  The Noteflight notation is here if you'd like to adapt it for yourself.


Some possibilities for classroom activities with the song:

• You could do the song in duple or triple meter instead of 5/8 and use it to have students echo specific LSA patterns in between repetitions of the song.  

• You could do the song without words for early childhood or lower elementary classes.

• Olaf activity: 

• Take a snowman prop and pretend he’s Olaf from Frozen. Tell the students we have to tell Olaf with our “BAH” rhythm words that he’s going to melt in summer! Olaf will say something to you, you repeat it back to him to tell him about how snow can’t be warm. Students echo rhythms after Olaf on "BAH.

• Decorating a Christmas tree activity: 

• Have students sit and move with flow like they are putting a string of lights around a tree.  
• Explore different levels of space based on how students are decorating the tree: 
• flow high to put the star on, 
• flow low to put presents under tree, 
• flow medium-high to put ornaments on,
• do ABA to combine star and presents with motion going high when song is high and low when song is low

•  Lift hands and put them down to sing 5-1.
•  Singing 5-1, individual students sing after the teacher: 
• “touch the top of the tree, bottom of the tree” 
• “ceiling, floor” 
• “head, toes” 
• “high, low”
• Students pretend to put something on the tree and "touch the tree" as they echo a tonal or rhythm pattern after the teacher.
• Repeat the song again, pretending to put more decorations on the tree with flow or beat movement.

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Autumn rhythms to read!

Rhythms in 4/4, 6/8, and 3/4 to read! The rhythms are straight from the Learning Sequence Activities! Download them here!

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.)

2nd grade demo: Learning Sequence Activity and rhythmic improv!

One of my classes has the honor of being selected to be part of a book being published about music teaching methods!  The book, which will be published by Oxford University Press, will be titled Approaches to Teaching Classroom Music.  Dr. Cynthia Taggart, one of my former professors, wrote the chapter about the method of music teaching called Music Learning Theory.  She asked many teachers she knows for video of students learning music with MLT.  This video was one of only 3 videos selected for the book chapter! 

The book will have a QR code linking to the video that readers will be able to scan on a smartphone or iPad. In the video, 2nd graders are singing in their Learning Sequence Activity patterns and improvising rhythms with a song called “Someone Special Gets the Drum”! Congrats to these 2nd graders on their accomplishment!!!