6 New Activities Using Flashcards in the Elementary Music Room

Ah, flashcards. Some music teachers love 'em, others can't stand 'em. I happen to enjoy using flashcards to review rhythmic and melodic concepts with my students. However, when we use flashcards in my classroom, we are never just reading flashcards. I've put together a list of six ways that I use flashcards to inspire fun and creativity in my music class:

1. Fly Swatter
This activity is fun for kids and you can be a little bit competitive with it! Attach several flashcards to your chalk or dry erase board. Divide the class into two teams and have one volunteer from each team stand in front of the board. Give each volunteer a fly swatter. The teacher* then reads one of the flashcards out loud. Whichever volunteer swats the correct flashcard first wins a point for his/her team.

*To increase student engagement/participation, you can assign another student the task of reader.

2. Big Circle
Arrange your flashcards on the floor in a big circle. (You should either have one for each student or half as many if you would like your students to work in pairs.) Have each student or pair stand in front of a flashcard and read the notes. Ring a bell or chime to signal for every student to move clockwise to the next flashcard and read it.

Anchor yourself at one flashcard and this can be an easy way to take a subtle assessment.

3. Heads Up
For this game, the teacher holds a flashcard above his or her forehead so that all the students can read it. Instruct the students to clap or sing the notes on the card. If the students recite it clearly and accurately, the teacher should be able to identify exactly which notes were on the flashcard.

To differentiate this activity, have stronger students play the teacher role and try to identify the notes. This makes a great center or small group game.

4. Project on an IWB
There are limitless options when it comes to electronic flashboards on your interactive whiteboard. You can find great videos on YouTube that have rhythmic playalongs to familiar songs. You can also get a ton of review games on Teachers Pay Teachers that make reading flashcards fun and interactive.

Assign students to be the "pointer" and the "mouse clicker" to incorporate more jobs in the classroom.

5. Memory Game
Display several flashcards. The teacher randomly picks two or more flashcards and recites them one after another. Students try to identify the patterns and arrange them in the correct order.

This can also be a fun hands-on activity if you have index card sized flashcards. You can give a stack to each student or group so that students can arrange them on their own.

6. Composition Inspiration
Coming up with a composition from scratch can be intimidating for young musicians. Try displaying rhythmic flashcards and asking students to assign a pitch for each beat for an easy melodic composition.

You could also display a number of flashcards and give students the option of which ones they would like to use and arrange them in whatever order they like.

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I hope some of these ideas have inspired you or refreshed your memory with some great ways to use flashcards in the music room. If you need flashcards to get you started, I have a huge bundle of winter-themed flashcards available in my store right now. You can also see my entire Flash Cards collection to check out more options for the rest of the school year!

Trash to Treble Treasure

Happy Friday, everyone! Six weeks of school are officially on the books for us in Maryland. Now that the High Holidays are over, we finally had a full week of school with no interruptions. To break up my week a little bit, I did some fun music games and review centers this week. Here's a great one that I added to my roster of center activities this year.... And it didn't cost me anything!

Review treble clef notes while reinforcing tier 1 vocabulary!

The teacher's lounge at one of my schools has this magical table... it's a kind of parking lot for unwanted teaching supplies. Teachers drop things off when they are no longer useful and the rest of us swoop in and find ways to repurpose them for our classrooms. Two years ago I scored a free set of cuisenaire rods that I repurposed into a really fun rhythm game.

This time, someone was discarding a huge set of sight words flashcards. 

(Out of curiosity, I tried to find their author/source... The cards say Bea's Hive on them but a google search didn't return any results for me. If you know who makes these cards or more about them, I'd be interested to learn more!)

So I printed out some free staff paper and came up with a brand new treble clef review activity:

Students draw a card and must write a complete sentence using the word. Then they look through the sentence and find all the letters in the musical alphabet. Finally, they notate those letters on the staff. 

This is a great cross-curricular activity to reinforce vocabulary and sentence building while also reviewing treble clef notes.

Worked for me Wednesday: Mystery Message Game

I'm one day late to the party, but today I am linking up with Mrs. Miracle's Music Room for this fun linky, "Worked for me Wednesday."

My subject for "Worked for me Wednesday" is a tried-and-true game that I love to play with my intermediate students: Mystery Message from makingmusicfun.net.

First off, if you've never visited Making Music Fun, you need to go check it out. NOW. 

I'll wait here.....

Ok, welcome back. Is your head spinning from the sheer number of high quality music resources available? I thought so. This website was my SAVIOR when I first started teaching. Now that I've gotten into Teachers Pay Teachers, I sometimes forget about the resource gems that I've gotten from MMF. 

The game I am talking about today is Mystery Message. Setup is very easy (always a plus when you teach on a cart, as I do.) Just print enough game cards for every student and distribute some kind of writing implement. 

I opted to laminate mine and use dry erase markers so that students could follow along and write each letter on the bottom as they went along.

This is a fantastic game for practicing aural skills. I have my students sing the patterns using solfege. Here are a few recommendations I have to maximize student success:

• Use the gradual release model: Also known as "I do, We do, You." First, I model an example for the class using the document camera. Then, have the class figure out an entire word in a whole group setting. Finally, when the students are ready, I will let them pair up so that one student sings the clues while the other tries to guess the word.
• Provide a range of letters: Rather than just singing a pattern and asking the students to identify it, I give them a range (for example: A-L) so that my students don't get overwhelmed.
•  Sneak in assessment: I LOVE using games for assessments because they are a low-pressure way for me to get an idea of where my students are. While they are playing the game in pairs, I will circulate around the room to listen for rhythmic accuracy and pitch matching.

I hope you enjoy this game as much as I do! Don't forget to hop over to Mrs. Miracle's Music Room to read the rest of the posts in the linky party.

Introducing Notes on the Staff

I still find it somewhat magical that I get to be the person who introduces so many children to the concept of reading notated music. I know that there are many diverse musical cultures around the world that have no use for our western system (many would argue that American Pop music is among them), but I still think of "reading music" as one of the most major things that a child should be able to do when they leave my class. My third graders are getting their very first introduction to it this week, so I thought I would take a few minutes to share my thoughts on the subject. 

When to start?

I know a lot of teachers have varying opinions on the subject. I've seen teachers wait until 5th grade and some start as early as 1st. 

I start in third grade to prepare for their recorder unit (and sometimes I may do a little taste of it at the end of 2nd grade, depending on the class). 

How to present the info?

Even though I don't teach the treble clef notes until third grade, my students start reading from basic staff lines in Kindergarten. By the time they are ready to start letter names in third grade, they have already done the following in earlier years:

• conceptualized where high and low sounds will be on the staff
• learned the difference between line notes and space notes
• placed solfege on a two-, three-, and five-line system

All of this has prepared them to easily replace solfa names with letter names on the staff. (I continue movable do solfege through fifth grade.)   

Activities for Kinesthetic Learners

Image source: Mr. Jack's Grade 5/6 Music

• Have every child use a "hand staff" while reciting an EGBDF mnemonic device.
• Floor staff made out of masking tape (or one of these epic rugs, which I am fortunate enough to have at one of my schools this year!)
• Bean bag toss game:

I made this for when I teach on a cart... electrical tape on a padded table cloth.

That blurry thing flying across the room is an elephant beanie baby. I say a note name and the student has two tries to get it to land on the correct line or space.

Activities for Visual Learners

• SmartBoard review games. This year I am using MineStaff by Music With Sara Bibee. Last month we used my product, Cookie Capers.
• Create a new mnemonic device for the line notes and illustrate it with this free worksheet from Jennifer Conn.
• Play this card game, Music Memory. This one is great as a center activity.

Activities for Auditory Learners

• Every Good Boy Deserves Football Song by Dan Barrow. My students are OBSESSED with this and request it over and over.

Last but not least... Don't forget to MAKE MUSIC

All the theory drills, flashcards, and games in the world cannot replace the benefits that come from actually making music. I never want to lose sight of that. It is definitely fun to do review centers and play all these games, but I don't see this as the main focus of an elementary music class by any means. All these literacy skills must lay the foundation for a life of music playing and singing. Otherwise, what's the point?

Testing out our dry erase boards!

Well, we made it through our first day back! While much of my day was spent on review (reviewing class procedures, reviewing treble clef notes, reviewing rhythms), I was able to crack open my box of new dry erase boards and use them with my fifth graders today. We were learning about steps, skips, and repeats.

I know they're not exactly Earth-shattering technology, but it was the first time I've ever used the lined boards with a class and the students were all engaged and enthusiastic about it.

We did a little activity using the boards where I would tell them what note to start on and then give directions such as "draw a note one step up. Next skip down to the bottom line" etc. Then at the end I would check and see who was able to follow all of the directions and give them a Bamboo Buck (the school's PBIS reward system).

I also wanted to share this infographic that I saw floating around Facebook a few days ago: 

Source: Middleweb.com

Read the full article here!

These were all great reminders to have fresh in mind after coming back from a long break. One important reminder for me was that it's sabotage not to provide students with written instructions. I know that is one thing I forget sometimes! So I made sure to write my directions on the board. I'm sure that contributed to the success of this activity.

I'm developing a new game called "Step Right Up!" that will be another way to review steps, skips, and repeats with a cute, glittery game show theme. I uploaded it to Teachers Pay Teachers over the break and another seller was kind enough to privately point out to me that it had a GLARING TYPO on it. Whoops! So until I get a chance to go back and double-check the whole file, it's not available yet. Should be within a day or two!

Speaking of TpT... don't forget about the HUGE giveaway that just started. Scroll down to the previous post to sign up! 5 days left!

The CASE Method

In college I had a professor who used to tell us to use the CASE method of teaching: Capture And Steal Everything!

I was reminded of that today as I popped into my colleague's room and saw her doing an awesome activity. I immediately said to her, "I'm stealing that!" and whipped up a quick little Smart Notebook to incorporate it in my next lesson.

What I saw was this brilliantly simple way of writing out text so that it matches the melodic contour of a song:

Writing out the melody like this was a great transitional way to help my 2nd graders to recognize higher and lower pitches with a visual.

Then, I transferred the song to the staff. In our last lesson we practiced finding so and mi on the staff with my game "Help Me Find Me" (which is still 28% off in my TPT store until midnight tonight) so we were ready to identify the line and space notes of this melody and sing it with solfege:

Now I just threw this little notebook file together during my lunch break today, so it doesn't have any bells and whistles, but you're welcome to download it for free and try it out. See if your students respond as well as mine did to the visuals!

Stick to Staff Solfege Activities

I have been working on solfege with my students for a few weeks and now I am starting to transition them from reading stick notation to the treble staff. Last week we played this awesome game using stick notation by Aileen Miracle, and today I started using some things I created.

Stick to Staff Writing Activity

I created some flashcards with solfege on them and had students transfer it onto large laminated staff paper. The thing I am most excited about is the fact that I differentiated the examples and used colored star stickers to organize them by difficulty. Now I can see exactly what level each student is at and can facilitate learning of all different levels within a single class.

Click here for a free download of my Stick Flashcards. I pasted them onto index cards and laminated them to last longer.

Catch That Turkey

My next step is to play this stick to staff review game that I created for Smart Notebook. I got very into the thanksgiving theme and when you click on the different turkeys, the correct answer will actually GOBBLE. Sound effects make everything more fun!

You can purchase this turkey game from my TPT store.