In planning for my upcoming semester of teaching music online, I've been thinking a lot about how I can engage my students with singing games. As a Kodály-inspired teacher, singing games are the bread and butter of my music program, and I was not ready to give them up when I found out I wouldn't be seeing my students face-to-face this fall. So I got together with a group of creative teacher friends to compile this list of ten singing games and activities that you can do to get your students singing, moving, and playing during online learning. Enjoy!
Songs and Games in this playlist: Brown Bear Brown Bear, Button You Must Wander, Great Big House in New Orleans, Miss Mary Mack, Rhythm Telephone, Rico's Pizza Restaurant, Solfa Simon, Telephone, and two ways to play We Are Dancing in the Forest!
Today I wanted to share one of my new favorite songs for Thanksgiving: Turkey in the Barnyard! It's a piggyback song to the tune of Charlie Over the Water. I love that it's mostly a So-Mi song, but the end is on Do so it's a great song to prepare or present that note.
I had my students read the lyrics first, and then I wanted to see if they could memorize the lyrics, so I used one of my favorite SmartNotebook features: the shade!
If you've never used it before, it is SO helpful in helping students to focus. You can drag it across the screen so that only a portion of the slide is visible.
Each time they sang the song I covered up another line of the lyrics until eventually they were singing it completely from memory.
I also put the pitches on a simple two-line staff so that next time my students can read it that way and see Do on a ledger line.
I also play the same game as Charlie Over the Water: children are seated in a circle and one person gets to be "it." While we are singing, the person who is it walks around the outside of the circle. On the last line of the song, he or she taps someone and they have a "duck-duck-goose style" chase.
Kids love playing the game and they also love the visuals I created for it on the Smart Board.
Happy Sunday, everyone! I hope those of you who are back to teaching have spent some time this weekend relaxing and recharging. My husband I enjoyed spending time in our pool this weekend while the weather is still nice and warm. Now, I'm reflecting back on my lessons from this past week, which was our first week back at school. I'm linking up with Aileen Miracle at Mrs. Miracle's Music Room to share three things that went really well this past week!
At the beginning of the school year, I believe very firmly that the first few music classes should focus on practicing rules/routines and community building rather than jumping straight into teaching content. It is so important to me that my students feel comfortable to try new things and make mistakes when they are in my music class. If we don't spend that time getting to know each other within a musical context, then the rest of the year feels disjunct and forced. For that reason, all of my lessons this week focused on introductions, name games, and ice breaker activities.
1. Thumper Name Game
I wanted to do something different with my intermediate students this week. So I brought in a game from my childhood. I remember playing this game all the time with my friends in elementary school. However, an internet search turned up no results for the source of the song and game. So I took it upon myself to transcribe it so I could share it with all of you. Click on the picture below to download the song and gameplay directions.
Note: I have no formal Kodály training (yet!) so I don't have very much experience in transcribing or collecting folk songs. If you have any comments or questions about the content, PLEASE let me know! Constructive criticism is always welcome :)
When I taught this game to my class this week, we started out with a simplified practice version. In the practice version, you don't pick other kids' names at random. Instead you go around the circle, each person saying the name of the kid next to him/her. That reduces kids' anxiety because they know exactly when their turn will arrive. They can also practice saying the names ahead of time.
Once they have practiced a bit, you can really let loose and have them get competitive with it, if they are the kind of class that enjoys that sort of thing!
2. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
I love this book! I'm sure I don't have to waste too much time singing the praises of Eric Carle here, but just in case this classic children's book is not already in your library, here is a link to purchase it. I'll just say that my students love the familiarity of the format and catch on quickly when we read it. I actually sing the words to the first phrase on so mi and la (s-m-s-m-ss-l-s-m) and the next phrase on fa-re-so (f-rr-f-r-ff-s-f-r.)
Then, when we finish reading and singing the book, it turns into a game:
I replace the animals with children's names. So if it's Judy's turn, the whole class sings, "Judy, Judy, what do you see?" Then she must pick another student and sing, "I see [another student's name] looking at me." This is a great way to get students to open up and sing on the first day of school. (If a child is feeling very shy and doesn't want to sing out, I will walk over to him/her with Arpeggio the Cat and give the child the option to whisper softly into Arpeggio's ear instead of singing out loud. That usually works like a charm.)
I often have students begging to play this game again and again after the first day of school!
3. Getting to Know You BINGO
I made this game at the suggestion of someone in a Music Teachers Facebook Group. A teacher was asking for suggestions for getting-to-know-you bingo prompts. I offered to put them together on this bingo card and then gave it to everyone in the group for free.
I played this with my fifth graders and everyone had a great time. It gets kids up, moving around, and talking to each other about music. The rules are as follows: Each student gets a bingo card. They must walk around and find a classmate who can do the thing in each square. When I did this with my fifth graders, I also added the rule that they could only put a single person's name on their card one time. Standard bingo rules apply: in order to win, students must be able to fill in four in a row or four in a column, or four diagonally across.
I also told my fifth graders there would be a prize if anyone was able to fill their card by the next day. And one dedicated student was able to do it! He told me that once I posed the challenge, he couldn't think about anything else until he had done it! I'd call that a successful music class.
I hope you like these three ideas. They all worked great in my classes this week and I can't wait to share more next Sunday. Don't forget to see what everyone else has been up to by checking out Mrs. Miracle's Music Room!
This week I started my unit on form with PreK through fifth grade. I've found in my teaching so far that form is the most difficult unit for a lot of students. It is a very abstract concept, and unless you are an experienced musician, it can be difficult to understand the phrase structure and the subtle differences that make up the form of a piece of music.
Whenever I teach a new concept, I try to make sure my students do a few things: sing it, move to it, play it on instruments, and visualize it.
Being on a cart makes some of these things particularly challenging, but I wanted to share some of the things I've been doing in the classroom to teach form:
Fifth Grade
I wanted to do a fun, engaging lesson with my fifth graders to introduce rondo form. Since I am on a cart at one of my schools, our range of motion is somewhat limited. Even if we move desks out of the way (which I think is a waste of time during our 30 minute block for music), my fifth grade class is 33 students and there just isn't space in their classroom. Since it's icy, we couldn't go outside... I had to think of something we could do inside at our desks.
That's where this FANTASTIC resource comes in:
Rhythm Basketball by Pitch Publications!
The Nutcracker March is in rondo form... How convenient! The play-along slideshow has a different page of rhythm for each section and was labeled with letters so that we could clearly see the form.
I modified the lesson to use tennis balls instead of basketballs, and it worked great! The students bounced their tennis balls off of their desks so there was no need to move furniture around. Everyone had a fun time, myself included. Even the kids who can tend to be tough nuts to crack were opening up and participating. I can't recommend this activity enough!
Fourth Grade
I started their form unit by reviewing Call & Response. I learned this song in college and have taught with it every year since. We had a lot of fun singing and moving to show the form:
For some of my larger classes, we modified the movement slightly. Instead of being in one large circle, we split up in several groups and just made circles wherever they would fit around the room. The moves are simple enough that my students were able to do them all without my guidance.
We also sang and played instruments to the Banana Boat Song, Day-O. (I was disappointed that only one of my fourth graders had seen Beetlejuice. Kids these days.) This one is in their Spotlight on Music curriculum, too! I had them play guiro and cabasa on the response, which sounded great with the calypso style.
Third Grade
We were working on AB form (I don't bother throwing the terms "binary" or "ternary" at them. I'd rather give the form a name they are more likely to remember.) We used movement to experience AB form by performing the dance, Niggun Atik. I learned this at a Kodaly workshop last year and was thrilled to see it also included in the third grade curriculum for Spotlight.
If you've never seen the dance before, this video is a pretty good demonstration:
We start by just learning the footwork, and then the next time I bring this dance into their classroom I add the clapping and Egyptian hand-holding.
Second Grade
I LOVE doing cumulative songs with this age group. They really enjoy the challenge of reading and performing all of the lyrics. In their Spotlight book, we sang "I Bought Me a Cat" and I introduced them to the vocabulary term, "verse." We defined a verse as a repeated melody with different lyrics each time.
First Grade
Speaking of cumulative songs, I did a really fun one with my first graders: The Rattlin' Bog! I had never heard this song in my childhood... when I got to college a few of my fellow Music Ed majors were appalled that I didn't know it and proceeded to teach it to me. Now I love singing it whenever the mood calls for it!
Kinder
We learned a few call and response songs, although I have not yet introduced that terminology to my kinders. My favorite is John the Rabbit. I use the version from Music Together. We start by learning the response part, "Yes Ma'am" and "No Ma'am" and move like bunnies whenever we sing that part.
I also went out on a limb and decided to have my first graders sing this song and make finger puppets to go along with it!
I love incorporating some crafts into my lessons whenever I can. Especially on my long days with no planning time. After teaching seven classes in a row, it's nice to get a break from whole-group instruction and just let the kids create for a little bit.
After they colored their bunnies (and named them, of course), they used them to perform the response part of the song.
The best part, though, is the "bunny dance break" during the instrumental interlude.
These are some of the things I've done this week to teach form in the classroom. What do you do to teach these concepts in your room?
In the past few weeks, I've finally overcome my aversion to music notation software. I finally found a program that I consider user-friendly and suitable to my needs: Noteflight! I needed to write up some arrangements for a choir that I'm leading at my temple, and I found that out of all the software I've tried since college, Noteflight has been the one that makes the most sense to me. So... hooray! I put together two new songs on Teachers Pay Teachers, and Noteflight was a huge help! I think that the newer products in my budding TPT store are starting to look more polished and put-together. I hope you agree!
One of the new songs is a last-minute addition to my Halloween repertoire: Pass The Witch's Broomstick. When I did this song with my first graders, we used a rhythm stick instead of a broomstick to pass around the circle. I'm thinking of buying some kind of small-scale broom to use, but their imaginations seem to be doing fine for now.
I also started adding Thanksgiving products to my store. This Turkey Turkey Gobbler song was a huge hit with my students last November and I can't wait to bring it back. My favorite memory of the game was when my principal dropped in right in the middle and saw a student hiding behind the piano. The look on his face (before he realized what we were doing) was priceless!
