Pop Songs for Upper Elementary General Music

So many of us are interested in using popular music in our teaching. However, without training in using pop music for music pedagogy, we may be unsure of how to tie the repertoire back to musical concepts. What’s the connection between our curricula and songs that are not from the folk song or Western European classical tradition? What is the role of student-suggested selections in our teaching?

Here are some ideas for using pop music in upper elementary classes. All of these ideas come from the 2021 - 2022 curriculum inside The Planning Binder.

We’ll look at a few selections for upper elementary, as well as some activities for older beginners.

Let’s jump in!

 
 

Concepts and Songs Lists

One of the biggest time-saving documents we might make at the beginning of the year is a list of songs with corresponding musical concepts. If our goals are to use more popular music in our teaching, these lists can help keep us on track.

These songs are part of a Concepts and Songs list that I made at the beginning of the year for The Planning Binder.

You can read more about concepts and songs lists with the links below:

Pop Songs and Musical Concepts for Upper Elementary:

Synco-pa: Surfin’ USA (Beach Boys)

This melody was written by Chuck Berry, and released in 1958 under the title, “Sweet Little Sixteen.” Brian Wilson re-wrote the song to the version of “Surfin’ USA” that we know today, and released it in 1963.

Aurally Identifying Synco-pa

Synco-pa happens in the background of the chorus, at the words, “inside, outside, USA.”

Students can identify if the sounds of “USA” are even or uneven (uneven). From there, they can decide which letter has the longest sound (S) and which have short sounds (U and A).

Other Learning Activities: Early Experience with Synco-pa

Before students are ready to aurally identify synco-pa, there are a number of active experiences we can curate.

When students are first starting to explore this new rhythm, we can play it on body percussion in a movement activity:

  • Formation:

    • Students stand in a circle with the recording playing.

  • Verses:

    • During the verses, the teacher claps four or eight-beat patterns that incorporate synco-pa. Students echo the patterns on body percussion of their choice.

  • Chorus:

    • During the chorus, students jump inside the circle (on the word inside), then back out to their spots (on the word outside).

    • At the words, “USA,” students clap the synco-pa rhythm, or they hold their hands out to the side and clap the rhythm with their neighbors’ hands on either side.

High Do: Rise Up (Andra Day)

Cassandra Monique Batie is the singer and songwriter who goes by the stage name, Andra Day. She performed this song at the presidential inauguration parade in 2021. Students love this selection!

Aurally Identifying High Do

Students can analyze the melodic direction of the chorus and aurally identify high do as a skip higher than la.

Students might also count how many times Andra sings “I’ll rise up” and identify that the first two times she sings mostly on sol. The third time she repeats the words, she moves up to high do. Students might consider why she made this musical choice and how her melody emphasizes the repetition of the words, and the message of the song.

Other Learning Activities: Conscious Use Experiences with High Do

After students have had many learning experiences with this song over several weeks, we can create an invitation to arrange partner melodies in small groups using melodic cells. These melodic cells would be used in other learning activities throughout the process in The Planning Binder, as well as this final learning activity.

 
 
 

In small groups (about three or four musicians) or with a partner, students arrange these fragment melodies in an elemental order. In this case we’re using aabb, abba, or aaab. These melodies will be performed as partner melodies with the chorus of the song at the end of this project.

Student groups explore different combinations of the melodic cells and decide on an order they like. After the order is chosen and practiced, students can notate their melodies on the staff.

After students have practice singing, notating, and rehearsing their melodies, they have the opportunity to share out while the rest of the class sings the main melody of the chorus.

Fa: Better When I’m Dancin’ (Meghan Trainor)

This is a great option for a warm up entrance song! Students may already know this Meghan Trainor song from The Peanuts Movie.

Aurally Identifying Fa

Students can analyze the melody of the chorus and aurally identify steps coming down from sol in the text, “we can do this together.” Students can notice the melody moves down by step from the word, “do” and that the word, “this,” is a step lower. In this class, we call the pitch a step lower than sol, fa.

 
 

We can also invite students to sing the fragment melody on solfege with hand signs, and on numbers holding up fingers.

Other Learning Activities: Conscious Use Experiences with Fa

We might add a partner melody to the song that outlines the functional harmony.

The text here repeats: “you’ll feel better, you’ll feel better…” and outlines the harmony of the song - do, fa, re, sol.

Students can sing the new partner melody on solfege with hand signs, then on numbers holding up fingers. From there, they can point to a barred instrument (placed vertically) to show the outline of the melodic contour.

This sets students up well to transfer the melody from voices to barred instruments. In partners, one student can sing the melody on solfege, numbers, or letter names while the other partner plays. Students switch jobs so both players have a chance at a barred instrument.

 
 

Songs and Concepts for Older Beginners:

Upper elementary musicians come to us at a range of formal music training. However, they all come to us with a musical background based on the music they interact with on a daily basis.

Older beginners have years of musical experience through popular music. How can we utilize their musical interests in the classroom?

Here are a few ideas:

Steady Beat vs Rhythm: We Are Family (Sister Sledge)

The sisters from Sister Sledge are from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Their music was especially well-known as a part of the disco era, but students will still enjoy it today! The song was written by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards. Kathy Sledge was the lead singer for this song, and was 19 years old at the time of the recording.

Aurally Identifying Steady Beat

Invite students to copy your body percussion pattern as the song plays. When students accurately imitate the body percussion pattern, ask them to change something about it, while still playing at the same time as you.

Students can notice that the sounds of the body percussion change (snapping, clapping, patting, etc.), but the distance between the sounds stays the same.

Learning Activity: Early Experiences with Steady Beat

Students can create a name chain with a group of four to perform with the chorus.

Guided practice with this can be helpful. As the recording plays in the background, ask for four volunteers. The whole class speaks the names of those volunteers with a steady beat. An example might be: Joseph, Christopher, Catalina, Avery. Practice the pattern with the chorus and notice we repeat the pattern four times.

When students are ready, ask them to get into a group of four and choose an order for their names. Start the recording at the chorus and have students perform their patterns four times in a row.

When the verse begins, ask students to find a new group of four students.

Note - If there aren’t four even groups, students can partner in groups of two or three. Just be aware some names in the group will need to be repeated to complete the steady beat phrase.

Mi Re Do: I’m Good (The Mowgli’s)

This is a group is from Calabasas, California. I hadn’t heard this song until I started looking for pop music to use in the music room. As soon as I found it I was hooked.

Learning Activity: Early Experiences with Mi Re Do

Ask students to find a partner or a group of three. Play the recording and ask students to create high, medium, and low body percussion levels.

As the song plays, the teacher sings or plays short patterns of mi re do on a neutral syllable, or on a barred instrument. Students echo sing and play body percussion.

When students are ready, they can transfer their body percussion to barred instruments by looking at the pentatone layout. Where do we see high, middle, and low bars all next to each other? Lead students to identify the grouping of three bars on the instrument. Which of these three bars is high? Which is middle? Which is low?

Repeat the earlier activity with the song playing, but instead of body percussion, students echo with high, middle, and low bars on the instrument.

(In a later class students can make the connection between high middle low and mi re do.)

Student-Suggested Songs

Students can suggest music as well!

Often as teachers we see the value in using music suggested by students, but we might not always know where to start.

When students suggest songs to use in class, there are a few steps we might take to make sure the song is in alignment with our values as a member of the school community, and our values as educators. We’ll start with looking at the song, analyzing its musical content, and then implementing it in the curriculum.

Getting Started: Lyrics & Cultural Context

If you’re not already familiar with the song, a great place to start is a quick google search of the lyrics.

Each teaching situation will be unique in terms of what the school community considers to be appropriate language and subject mater. Based on our knowledge of our students’ experiences, community values, and school culture, we can choose if we’re going to use the selection or find an alternative.

It’s also a good idea to do a quick scan of the first few Google search results pages to see any movies, video games, etc. the song may be associated with. Depending on your school community, you might also look into the musical artist to see if there is any relevant recent news you should be aware of.

Musical Analysis

After looking through lyrics, we can turn our attention to the musical content of the song. For this, we’ll use our knowledge of song analysis and decisions about what songs to use with musical concepts.

Is there a repeating rhythmic or melodic pattern in the chorus we can pull from? Is there anything happening prominently in a background vocal or instrumental line that students can hear easily? Is there a chord progression students might sing?

The most convenient section of the song to analyze is often the chorus or the bridge, since those hooks are intended to be more memorable than the chorus.

Implementation

With the lyrics and subject matter looked over and the music analyzed, it’s time to add the song to the curriculum. In my opinion, the easiest place to start implementation is in a warm-up or closing activity. From there students can continue to explore the song in the daily lesson layout.

But what if a song is clean, uplifting, and interesting to students, but we don’t see a curricular connection?

This is another reason having a scope and sequence and a grade-level song list is so beneficial! If we find a song we can’t use currently, we can make a note of where it could be relevant to the curriculum later in the year.

 
 

There are so many more possibilities for using popular music in the classroom! These are a few ideas from The Planning Binder, but students will have many more ideas for using pop music creatively.

Scaffolding Passing Games in Elementary General Music

I wonder if you’ve ever had this experience. Let’s imagine you’ve planned to play a passing game in your class. You anticipate playing it a few rounds as part of the lesson segment and then you’ll move on to another activity with the same song. But once you introduce the game and get going, you realize students are all over the place in terms of their beat passing skills. You have students moving it way to fast because they think it’s hot potato, students passing way too slow because they’re trying to follow directions and be careful, and you have some students who don’t know what to do when they get the ball. 

You’re not alone with this. Passing games can be deceptively difficult - even for our older students, especially when we get into passing games where we have to coordinate when to pick up and when to drop an object in front of a partner. 

Today we’ll talk about some ways to scaffold passing games so students are setup for success, regardless of their passing skills. We’ll break this into lower and upper elementary, with specific steps and considerations for each.

Let’s jump in.

 
 

Lower Elementary

 
 

One of the best things we can do is not to start with the passing game itself, but actually to start as a whole-class, kinesthetic activity. There are a few options for this, depending on what students need. Let’s start with the most basic one and move from there.

The key to all these scaffolds is that every single student in the room is keeping the beat in some way, even when they’re not passing the object. 

Pat the Steady Beat

The first thing to check in on is that students are actually aware of the steady beat, and they have some level of accuracy in their beat performance. Let’s use Bee Bee Bumblebee as an example.

Instead of passing an object around the circle and someone being “out,” lead students in patting a steady beat all together. At the end of the rhyme, the teacher calls on a student to decide where the class will keep the beat next (elbow, shoulder, shoe, neighbor’s shoe, etc.). After the next round, the student who was just chosen calls on the next student to decide where to keep the beat.

This adaptation of the game keeps things interesting because the beat changes with each iteration of the game. We’re also asking students to choose each other instead of keeping the ownership of the game exclusively with us.

Backing up and looking at beat competency is a critical first step. If students don’t keep the steady beat in their own personal kinesthetic space, they’re going to have a hard time tracking beat when it’s spread outside the circle.

Read More: Guide to Teaching Steady Beat
Listen to the Podcast: The First Weeks of Teaching Kindergarten Music

Track the Beat by Pointing

The next extension is for students to help you point the steady beat around the circle. As students speak the rhyme or sing the song, everyone points in a steady beat, as if they’re tracking an imaginary ball.

This is a convenient way to play the game. First, we’ve introduced the core element of the game itself: passing and elimination. Second, we have a built-in self-assessment with beat passing because everyone in the room should land on the same person at the end of the rhyme. If students don’t land on the same person as the rest of the class, they have a clear indicator that their beat was off from the steady beat of the rhyme. From there, they can adjust and try again in the next round without being singled out. For this version of the elimination game, the person who is out can pat a steady beat in the middle of the circle, or pat a steady beat on a hand drum.

Pointing the steady beat instead of passing an object is also an established way to play many early childhood games, such as Zapatitos Blancos. If this is the scaffold students need, we can adjust many more passing and elimination games to use pointing instead of passing an object. Students will still have a successful, musical, and pedagogically sound experience with this option.

Walk Behind the Object

For this scaffold, we’ll add the passing object and play the game almost as normal. The difference is that the teacher is walking behind the circle as students pass the ball, and pointing to the student who should have the object. In essence, we’re tracking the beat around the room as students play the game. This scaffold gives students the opportunity to play the traditional passing game, but also gives them a visual support.

The most important part of this scaffold, like the others, is that everyone in the circle keeps the steady beat in some capacity when they don’t have the object. Students can either point with you as you move around the circle (like the second scaffold) or pat the steady beat somewhere on their bodies (like the first scaffold).

Passing Too Slowly or Too Quickly 

The purpose of the passing game is to practice steady beat. The purpose of steady beat is that it keeps us together as an ensemble. When students pass too slowly or too quickly, they’re adjusting the tempo of the steady beat.

If students are playing the traditional passing game, or using the third scaffold, consider adjusting the tempo of the rhyme to fit students’ passing speed. If a student passes too slowly, the rhyme would sound like: “bee bee bummmbbbbllleeeee bee, stung an man upon his knee,” as if the third beat had a fermata over it.

Assessment Questions:

This type of steady beat behavior would lead to some questions in our assessment process.

If we notice a student who consistently passes the object too slowly, we’ll think back to how the student engaged with the steady beat in the previous scaffolds. Do they perform the steady beat accurately with patting or pointing when they don’t have the object? Do they speak the rhyme out loud with the rest of the class? If so, they probably just need more practice with the game. In that case, we’ll continue playing the game as normal and let the student develop steady beat in this context on their own timeline. Remember that steady beat is a developing skill that students will achieve at different times.

If we observe multiple students in the group who struggle to pass the object accurately, we can consider backing up to one of the previous scaffolds.

These strategies work well for lower elementary when we’re working with object passing games. Let’s talk about upper elementary scaffolds we might use with more challenging passing games.

Upper Elementary

 
 

An Appropriate Difficulty Level

With older students - especially those we consider to be older beginners - one trap that we can fall into is giving them activities that are physically too advanced in relation to their musical coordination. I believe we do this because we don’t want them to be bored. We don’t want them to check out because the activity we’ve provided is too easy. But in fact, the opposite can happen. If students don’t feel successful, they’ll check out and look for ways to make the activity more interesting. This tends to be through behavior that as the teacher, we’d prefer that they avoid. This means it’s often better to back up and take things slowly, rather than rushing straight into a challenging passing game.

One of the things that tends to separate passing games that are more advanced from games that are more simple is the number of objects in the circle. 

Simple passing games will very often have one object that the whole class passes around. More complex passing games will often use an object for each student. This is tricky because the entire class has to coordinate when to pick up the object and when to drop it off - as well as which direction to drop it.

Upper Elementary Passing Game Scaffolds

Establish What Hand To Use

This may seem obvious, but take the time to establish where your right hand is and where your left hand is. Next, establish what it feels like to pass to the neighbor on the right. Students are likely following you in a circle as you lead the passing game. Because of this, might notice a few students on the other side of the circle who use the correct hand to pass the object, but follow you for the passing direction, which means they’re crossing their arm over their body and passing to the left - even when they think they’re passing to the right. Another on the other side of the circle will have an easier time if they don’t look at you. They can follow their immediate neighbors instead, that way everyone looks like they’re moving the same direction. 

Add A Verbal Cue

Students will have an easier time with the passing motion if they have a verbal cue that explicitly says what to do on what beats of the song. Some options for a verbal scaffold are “pick up, pass” or even simpler, “me, you, me, you” or “mine, yours, mine, yours.” Students can also suggest their own cues! Whatever you choose, add the verbal cue as an ostinato to the main song as you perform the passing motions. Eventually transition to students whispering the ostinato, then thinking it in their heads. When you notice that students are ready, they’ll sing the song as they perform the passing game.

Add Objects Gradually

When first introducing the game, students will sing the song or speak the verbal cue ostinato without any object being passed. We’re just practicing the motion. When you see that students are successful, start to add in objects one by one. To do this you’ll have a pile of passing objects (erasers, cups, beanbags, etc.) next to you. As you sense students are ready, you can scaffold up by adding one object at a time into the circle. The reverse is true if you see that students aren’t ready to pass all together - you can collect the objects as they come around the circle and put them back in the pile next to you. This gives you a quick and easy way to control the difficulty of the passing game, based on what you see students need.

Try a New Formation

Not all passing games need to happen in a circle! If you anticipate that the game will be too advanced for students at first, try the passing game in a straight line before you move to a circle. When students pass in a line, there’s no confusion about which direction to pick up and and which direction to pass. You can also try having students sit in the circle, but turn to the right (as if they’re lined up in a train). From this “train” formation, students pass the object on the outside of the circle using their right hand. With this adaptation, students are only worried about picking up the object and dropping it forward. This eliminates the left and right passing confusion all together. 

Establish A Plan for Mistakes

The whole game part of a passing game is that things can go wrong, and we all need to work together! So make a plan for what to do when we mess up, instead of making one student panic that they have 15 erasers in front of them and everyone is yelling at them to hurry up. My recommendation is that no matter what, keep up the passing motion in a steady beat. Even if the class messes up and there isn’t an object in front of each student, the motion continues. Similarly, if one student ends up with a pile of objects in front of them, they’ll continue with the beat motion and move them one at a time to their neighbor on the right. In other words, regardless of what’s in front of you, we’re all working together like a big clock.

Make Your Own Version in Small Groups

Sometimes passing games are difficult because there are just too many people in the circle, which makes it harder to reset. To counter this, consider having students come up with their own versions of the passing game in small groups. Depending on the grade-level you’re working with, students might be in groups of four, five, or six. An additional perk of this option is that there’s more buy-in when students have a personal stake in the creation process. Students also have the opportunity to create the routine as simple of as complex as they want with fake passes, tosses, etc.

Ask Your Students

The very last strategy is to hand the responsibility of learning back over to the students. All of our students, and especially upper elementary musicians, are more than capable of problem-solving on their own. If the process of teaching the passing game feels tricky and things aren’t going as you planned, hand the problem back over to the class. This moves the learning process away from us feeling frustrated and confused, and it puts students in the driver’s seat. Questions like, “Are we all passing to the same steady beat?” and “Why do you think that is?” are a great starting point. Give students a few moments to talk to the people around them and then work together to make a list of strategies on the board. Students are the ones who know what’s confusing them or making things difficult. We just have to ask them. From there, they can articulate their own strategies that we probably wouldn’t have come up with or clarified with the wording they need in order to understand. 

Moving Forward

Passing games can be a lot of fun but they can also be frustrating if students are new to them! The important thing to keep in mind is that we can play passing games in some capacity regardless of what scaffold we’re using. There are ways to back up and move forward so students have the appropriate level of support and challenge.