Helping students find DO and count rhythms

A choral resource for you! This is an information sheet that can help singers know where DO is and how to count rhythms for melodic sight-reading.  This link allows you to download in better resolution; the google drive folder has both the PDF and an editable Word version.

Beehive!

A new melody for an existing chant (not sure who wrote the chant). First graders love this song and set of activities!

• Day 1: Start the students on an ostinato sung on the resting tone on macrobeats: "1, 2, 3, bzz, 1, 2, 3, bzz," having them tap the macrobeat on their legs for the first three beats and on their shoulders on the buzz. Sing the song over the ostinato.  If you are using the words the first day of the song, display the words to students with bees, sees, hive, and five underlined, guiding them to notice that the "bzz" happens at those spots.  Then, have 5 students pretend to be the bees, walking around the outside of the circle on macrobeats, gently tapping one student's should only on the buzz parts of the ostinato. Have the bees perform a major or triple pattern, and appoint five new bees, singing the last line of the song as you choose them.

• Day 2: Have students flow during the song as if they are bees flying in curvy pathways. Use this free TpT bumblebee animated vocal exploration SMART board file to have students explore their head voices between repetitions, having one student come up to the front to click the smart board and echo a triple meter pattern. For other repetitions, have students move the ostinato from day 1 again, changing which body part they sting themselves on for the buzz every time.

• Day 3: Use the song for a locomotor movement activity. Guide the students to explore curvy and straight pathways ("beelines" 😃) around the room. Have them fly high or low. Have them find closed or small shapes like they are the bees hiding, or open and large shapes like they came out of the hive.  At the end of the activity, ask the students to "fly back to their nests" returning to their spots.

Other ways to vary or spiral the activity to other grades, depending on students' skill levels:

• Have one student hide a toy bee around the room like it is hidden in the beehive as the rest of the students close their eyes. When the song is over, have students open their eyes and point quietly when they see the bee. Someone who pointed quietly will get to hide the bee next, and anyone who gets a turn performs a triple or major pattern.

• Use the toy bee to go around to students during the song, pausing after every line to "sting" a student with a dramatic resting tone buzz! Invite the student you sing to perform the resting tone as well. 

• Have students find the DO SOL MI patterns and sing DO SOL MI on solfege or on BUM BUM BUM in the song every time it occurs. They could also look at the notation for that pattern if they are ready for symbolic association, or they could replace it with different major tonic patterns that they create singing or writing and singing.

• Have students sing chord roots (DO DO FA DO, DO DO SOL DO) and possibly transfer that to instruments.

• Connect to the major tonic patterns in the song by playing the major tonic game. My version of the game: Students listen to patterns and jump after they hear a major tonic pattern, singing "major tonic," and they squat after they hear a major dominant pattern, singing "major dominant." If they are incorrect they sit down where they are and are out until the next round. Perhaps add subdominant in there since it is part of the song's progression!

Notation is here if you want to edit or display it in higher quality to your students.

Let's Play in the Snow! Rhythm finding activities

"Let's Play in the Snow" from Jump Right In is a well-loved song for my students at this time of year!

 My 1st graders use it to create different movements based on different winter clothes they could put on (scarf, hat, snowpants, etc.), and once they know the song, they practice audiating parts or all of it!

They also pretend to build a snowman, echoing triple meter patterns or singing the resting tone as they put new pieces of the snowman on.

My 3rd graders use these files to practice finding rhythms in the song, doing the 3rd grade version of rhythmic dictation for some of these trickier rhythms!

File 1:  Powerpoint with rhythms for them to read first, then rhythms to find in the lyrics of the song.  This is their first introduction to reading quarter-eighth rhythms in 6/8 (DU-DI).

File 2:  SMART board file for them to practice dragging some of the rhythms to where they go as a class.

File 3:  Small group work where the kids take the cut-out rhythms and place them where they go in the song.  I laminated the paper and the cut-out rhythms so we could reuse them, but you also could have the kids cut and glue if you wanted.

All 3 files are here!  Enjoy!!!

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!

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!

Autumn leaf rhythms to read!

Here are 5 different autumn leaf printables with duple meter rhythms to read. All rhythms are 4 beats long, and have just quarter notes and eighth notes.

3 of the rhythms come straight from the first duple meter Verbal Association LSA, representing the  Easy, Medium, and Difficult patterns that the kids learn to chant.

Download the leaf rhythms here.
Print these on autumn-leaf-colored paper (I used red, orange, yellow, brown, and green, and printed 6 of each pattern), cut, and laminate, for a cute rhythm reading activity where the kids can hold different rhythms they'll get to read!


As an extension to the activity, print out BLANK leaves, and have small groups write their own 4-beat rhythms!  Then have the kids perform the rhythms for each other in a Rondo form using a fall song as the A section of the rondo, and each small group as the B/C/D/E sections! (I use a song called "Fall Canon," which I got from an Orff class.)

Spring Rhythms to Read

Updated version:  It's important to show the kids that the same rhythm can be written in different time signatures, so HERE is an updated version of these rhythms. In this version, the 6/8 rhythms below are also notated in 3/4.  I also added the duple meter rhythms from the first duple meter LSA, notating the same rhythms two different ways (just quarters and eighths, then just half notes and quarter notes).

Looking for triple and duple meter rhythms with a cute background for springtime? You can download the ones below here. The patterns come straight from the LSAs! :)

Download the original slides here.

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.

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

Valentine game and minor song!

Song used: Valentine, Valentine, I'm searching for a Valentine (Jump Right In! book, Grade 1)

Materials:  small foam or paper hearts (2-6 of them)

Students sit in a circle with their eyes closed. First the teacher walks around the circle behind the kids, and hands out one heart each to 2-6 kids (depending on how many kids you want singing the pattern in between times through the song).

When the song is over, the teacher is back in his/her seat, and students open their eyes to look behind themselves and see if they got a heart. If they got a heart, they echo a minor tonic pattern in D minor after you (MI-DO-LA works great with this song since it's in the melody).

The students who just echoed patterns pass their hearts to new students as the rest of the class closes their eyes, getting back to their seats by the time the song is over. And the game continues!




Alternatives:

• Students could listen to the music for how many times they hear MI-DO-LA in the melody.
• Students could look at the notation of the music for where they see MI-DO-LA in the notation.
• Students could create a minor tonic pattern or minor melody instead of echoing after the teacher.

***Easter alternative of this song***:

I've also heard this song used with the words "Hiding eggs" at the beginning; however, I can't remember the rest of the words. But it could be used as an Easter activity too with revised words!

Reading Music: Tonal Patterns for Valentine's Day (FREE DOWNLOADS!)

For Valentine's Day, my 4th graders did an activity with the song "Love Somebody"(notation here; we sang it in D major) to practice reading tonal patterns.  Instructions for the activity (and obviously you can adapt it for your students):

• Download (at the bottom of this post!), print on light pink or red paper, and laminate the hearts from this page ahead of time.
• Pass out 1 heart each to about 4 students as you sing "Love Somebody."
• After the song is over, those 4 students look at their pattern and sing it by themselves for the class. The whole class can echo DO-MI-SOL patterns after you in between the individual students.
• Those 4 students pass their hearts to 4 other students as you sing the song again (the rest of the class can even close their eyes so it's secret!).
• The next 4 students sight-sing their patterns. 
• Repeat until the class gets tired of the activity!

Download the free, editable tonal-pattern hearts here.