Soy Una Taza is one of my students' favorites! Performed by CantaJuego, this extremely catchy song teaches the names of kitchen utensils through whole body movement. I learned it from Rachel Gibson from her session at the OAKE 2019 national conference and have loved teaching it ever since.
The song alternates between chanting and singing, so it's great to use in primary grades to distinguish between speaking and singing voice. It's also a great way to incorporate more Spanish language during Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month and all year long.
Lyrics:
Soy una taza, una tetera
una cuchara y un cucharón
un plato hondo, un plato llano
un cuchillito y un tenedor
Soy un salero, azucarero
la batidora y una olla express
Chu! Chu!
There's a video of the group performing it; however I prefer to just play the audio and demonstrate the moves myself. But here's the video so you can learn how to do the movements for yourself:
I created these visuals to help my students learn the words better in both languages:
I hope you have fun with this one. One final warning, though beware: It WILL get stuck in your head. Choo choo!
I've been preparing to teach syncopa to my fifth graders soon, so I've been thinking a lot about the Canoe Song. (You know the one... "My paddle's keen and bright." often sung by Girl Scouts?) It's recently been brought up in the music teaching community as a song that's inauthentic and appropriates indigenous culture. Because of that, I'm no longer choosing to teach it. I'm continuing to research music that better represents Native American voices in my classroom. In the mean time, I needed another song to fill the pedagogical gaps that the Canoe Song left behind.
The specific concepts that I was looking for were syncopa and minor tonality. I wanted a song that would be short and simple, easy to learn but engaging enough that students would want to sing it over and over again. I decided to flex my creative muscle and write one of my own.
The song is called, "Let There Be Peace" and uses a driving syncopated rhythm. I wrote it in E minor, an easily accessible key to accompany on ukulele and it sits well for children's voices. The best thing about it, though, is how easy it is to ad lib additional verses. The first two verses establish the form (Verse one is "Let there be peace on Earth" and verse two is "I am the peace on Earth.) and then you and your students can brainstorm additional verses ad nauseam. This makes it a great song to prepare a concept in a Kodály inspired classroom, because you can change the lyrics and sing it over and over again.
When I signed up for the Kodály masters degree program from the American Kodály Institute four years ago, I had no idea that I would be completing my final semester over Zoom! It was somewhat surreal, after three summers of intensive work with my cohort, to finish our program as tiny squares on a screen. But we made it, and learned a lot from our professors during this bizarre time of pandemic learning. I am actually quite grateful to have had this experience of online learning from a student's perspective, because now I feel like I understand a little bit more about what my students need from me when we return to school virtually in the fall.
One of my classes, Teaching Music to Students with Special Needs, was particularly eye-opening when we had a special guest teacher, Robert Hitz. He specializes in improvisation and creativity and absolutely leaned in to the challenge of teaching us via Zoom. He even coined the term "Zoomerang" to refer to music games played remotely via video conference.
Improvisation can be a scary thing for many students. Doing so over Zoom can feel even more daunting when everyone else is muted and you're just singing into the void. However, Robert facilitated an enlightening session where we got to have some fun shenanigans.
I'm not going to lie: even with crazy lag times and poor audio quality, it felt good to be making music with my classmates again! I think that many of these activities can be modified and used with our elementary students and I'm looking forward to trying. Here's a recap of what we did:
Layered Ostinati
To play this game, everyone had to - gasp - turn ON their microphones! We embraced the inevitable fact that it would be messy and not sync with our classmates. One person started by creating an ostinato (we used a mix of vocal improv, hand clapping, and instruments) and after a phrase or two, they would add another person into the groove. We kept adding people until everyone was doing their own thing at the same time.
Some things to consider: Obviously with the lag on Zoom you never really sync up with the rest of the group. The audio mix is wonky and you will only be able to hear a few people at any given time. It's not going to sound like a virtual choir, and that's OK. The important thing is to focus on the other people that you can hear and keep the music going. It might also be helpful to create the order of people ahead of time and type it in the chat, so participants will know when to join in with their ostinato.
Sound Relays
This activity isn't as affected by the inevitable Zoom lag because players take turns. One person improvises a phrase and then calls on someone else to unmute and respond with a new sound inspired by the one that came before it. Then they call on another person who responds with something related, and this continues until everyone has had a turn.
Some things to consider: I am 100% planning on using this one in my virtual teaching this fall. It is so empowering for students to be in charge of their music making with this kind of improvisation. For people who crave a bit more structure, like me, you could set it up as a rhythm or melodic improv activity and play it kind of like telephone.
In my version, Student A would create a four beat rhythm pattern. Then, Student B would repeat that rhythm pattern and create a new one. Student C repeats B's pattern and creates their own. And so on, and so on...
Alien Language
My entire cohort was CRACKING UP when we played this one. An improv classic whether online or off, in Alien Language you form a small group and speak to each other with entirely made-up sounds. We modified this for Zoom by only having a group of three or four participants playing the game while everyone else stayed on mute (and died of laughter.)
Some things to consider: This could be a really fun ice breaker. There's no wrong way to talk like an alien! The only challenge would be the maturity level of the group, because my cohort of 30-something-year-olds could barely keep it together.
Student-Generated Games
The culminating activity involved breakout rooms, my new favorite Zoom feature. We were randomly split into small groups and Robert sent us a list of motivating quotes and reflections about music. We were tasked with the job of taking one quote and using it to make up our own improv game to play.
My group used this quote:
"The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes – Ah, that is where the art resides!" ~ Arthur Schnabel
We decided to create a variation on the relay game we played earlier in the session, but we intentionally left rests and spaces in between sounds. It was interesting to hear how our patterns complemented and inspired each others'.
Takeaways From My Experience with Robert
I am so glad I got to participate in this session. Now I feel much more confident in the possibility of collaborative music making over Zoom. Last Spring, most of my live teaching sessions were just me singing while the rest of the class was muted and hopefully singing along with me in their homes. Now I feel like I can really open it up to include more students creating and improvising!
This time of year, my first graders are usually getting ready to add la to their melodic arsenal. They've been practicing so-mi songs for a while and it's time for the next step in their learning sequence. Since I completed my Kodály Level I last summer, I learned a lot about selecting quality songs to prepare, present, and practice la. I'm writing about one of my favorites today:
Prepare
This is a great song to prepare la. For those of you who are not familiar with the Kodály method, there are three stages to learning a new concept: prepare, present, and practice. During the prepare stage, the students are playing games and singing songs that include the new concept but they haven't made it conscious yet. The prepare stage is all about exposure and aural immersion. When preparing a new concept, I like to use songs that invite lots and lots of repetition, and it doesn't get much more repetitive than Bounce High, Bounce Low!
For this stage, I like to play the classic playground game, Over Under. Any time I can bring a playground ball into my music room, my kids go nuts! (When I taught on a cart, I would modify this by playing using something smaller like a tennis ball and they still loved it.) My musical version is slightly different from the traditional game. Here's a video version of the original:
The object of the game is for the students to pass the ball backwards around the entire circle without dropping it. Have students stand in a large circle, all facing the same direction. Make sure there is plenty of room between each child. Choose one student to hold the ball to start. The students will pass the ball on the second and fourth beat of each measure (either on a la or on a mi.) If passing on the high note, the student must pass it over her head, and if passing on the low note, the student must pass it between her legs. The student behind her needs to be paying attention and ready to catch it because otherwise it's easy to drop the ball in this game- literally!
A common pitfall with this game is that the students get so excited about passing the ball that they forget to match it up with the pitches as they go. I will assist with the singing or play the pitches on a melodic instrument so that they can clearly hear how it is meant to align. If they start passing slowly I slow the tempo of the song to match. Likewise, if they are in a groove and passing faster, I will sing faster to match.
Once a class has mastered the large circle formation, I will let them play it competitively. I will break the class up into two or three teams and give each team a ball. Instead of standing in a circle they stand in a line and the object is to get the ball from the front to the back.
For an added level of complexity, you can lengthen this game: when the ball gets to the back of the line, the last person has to run up to the front and start it over again. This continues until every player on the team has had a turn to be up front.
This can get chaotic with different teams singing the songs at different tempi, so if the noise is too much for your class, you can have each team go one at a time and use a timer to see which team can perform it the fastest.
Present
After several weeks of singing a variety of songs that include la, it's time to formally present the concept. In my Kodály level I class, I learned that a good song for presenting a concept needs to meet certain criteria. First, it should contain mostly known concepts. In this case, the known melodic material is so and mi. There should only be one instance of the new note, preferably appearing close to the end of the song. Since Bounce High, Bounce Low is such a short song, it doesn't fit this criterion perfectly, but I've had success using it nonetheless. (Some other good la present songs: Bell Horses, Snail Snail, Lucy Locket, Hickety Tickety Bumble Bee.)
When the new note occurs, it should be surrounded by its closest known neighboring pitch. This means that songs including the mi-la leap are too difficult to use for present songs. It's best to find songs that go from so to la directly.
Once your kiddos know the song very well (and after playing the game for a few weeks, they definitely will!) they are ready for the present lesson. You start by deriving the rhythm on the board. For this reason, you always want to pick songs with familiar rhythms when doing a formal present lesson. My first graders learned ta and ta-ti at the beginning of the school year, so this song meets the criteria perfectly.
After they derive the rhythm, you will add the solfege pitches underneath. You always want to go from the known to the unknown: first finding all the sos and mis, and then finding the new note.
The students should be able to aurally distinguish the fact that the new note is higher than so. At this point, you give the new note a name, la, and show the students how to label it and sing it. I also use this time to teach the Curwen hand sign that goes with it.
Practice
The final step in the sequence is to practice the new note. With Bounce High, Bounce Low, I like to take advantage of the fact that a bouncy ball fits perfectly like a note on the staff! I use it as iconic notation and show a large ball for quarter note and two smaller balls for paired eighth notes.
There's plenty of other ways to practice la as well: reading and writing the note, singing solfa games, improvising on instruments, playing a melodic ostinato, etc. This is the stage in the process where small group centers and individual work can be used to reinforce learning as well.
Have fun teaching musical concepts through this great game!
This has to be one of my favorite pieces of music to use in my teaching. I love to use classical pieces that my students immediately recognize. They are so much more engaged when they've heard the piece in their lives already.
In this piece, there are just so many great musical concepts just waiting to be unpacked: tempo, dynamics, orchestral instruments, storytelling, pitch, and of course, rhythm. The clear rhythmic motive in this piece is so catchy and accessible for even my youngest students.
For our MIOSM blog series, I am sharing how I use this piece to prepare my young students for quarter note and barred eighth notes. Here are a few different tried-and-true ways to use it:
1. One of my favorite ways to introduce the piece is to play a recording of it while dramatically telling them the story of Peer Gynt’s attempt to flee from the trolls. I think that storytelling is one of the most overlooked aspects of our craft. It is arguably the oldest form of human expression, and I love being able to get my students' attention and help them hone their aural skills by telling them stories.
(If your school and administration is super open-minded, perhaps you could also play them this terrifying video? Just kidding. Don’t show this video unless you want angry parents calling you demanding to know why you showed their child this demonic video in music class.)
Anyway, while I tell them the story, I begin chanting “tiptoe, tiptoe, tiptoe, troll” to the rhythm while our hero tries to escape. When the tempo and dynamics increase, I change it to “run run, run run, run run, troll!” It doesn’t take long before all of my students are chanting it along with me. Most are also singing along to the melody.
2. In a previous blog post, Listening Lessons Three Ways, I shared an awesome tool that was given to me by a former teacher: she calls it her "Marauders Map". It is actually two long paper rolls (they are a few feet wide and look great up on a chalkboard or dry erase board.) I start with the iconic notation and then when I'm ready to actually present quarter and eighth notes, I'll put the other one up side-by-side to compare.
3. In case you don't want to make your own map, here is a free printable/projectable one that I created using iconic notation:
4. Another fun activity to do with “Mountain King” is compare it to Mary Had A Little Lamb. I challenge my students to see if they can sing the lyrics to “Mary Had A Little Lamb" to the melody of "Mountain King." The same can also be done using "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" and it's fun to try and do the movements faster and faster with the accelerando in the piece.
5. One of the things that makes "In the Hall of the Mountain King" so accessible for students is the fact that it is so pervasive in popular culture. It's been covered and re-recorded by a number of popular artists and it is frequently heard in TV and movies. I've been told it is sampled in the song "Hair Up" from the new Trolls movie (how appropriate given the subject matter.)
No matter the source, there is a good chance that your students will recognize the tune when they hear it in class, and that is a great way to get them engaged in the lesson!
