2nd Grade Improvisation Activities

There are so many forms musical choice can make in our classrooms. One of them is improvisation.

Improvisation can take many different forms as well. Students could improvise with speech, singing, recorder, barred instruments, or unpitched percussion. They can also improvise movements. Improvisation might happen in a large group, small group, or individually. Improvisation might be free (“play whatever you want on this xylophone”) or structured (“play two measures in the pentatonic scale and end on do”).

All forms of improvisation are valuable, but this post will focus on a few ideas for structured improvisation in 2nd grade. In my curriculum outline, 2nd grade works on:

  • la

  • half notes

  • do

  • takadimi

All of the slides for this collection of improvisation activities are available in the resources page.

Before We Begin:

There are two blog posts you should check out before reading this one:

 
Victoria Boler 2nd Grade Improvisation Activities
 

Vocal Improvisation with La

Ickle Ockle

I first heard this song from a fabulous pedagog while I was in my undergrad, and it’s stuck with me ever since!

Ickle Ockle.jpg

kodaly.hnu.edu

The game is simple: students are standing in a circle as they sing the song. At the end of the song, students must find a partner (the partner may be anyone in the circle besides their immediate neighbor). Any student without a partner goes to the middle and the game begins again.

Vocal improvisation:

Many of us find vocal improvisation to be intimidating since there is no set of pitches for students to “type” on. Aurally, it can be trickier to improvise vocally with structured improvisation. This activity requires students to have truly internalized the sml toneset!

The Activity:

  1. All students sing the song like normal.

  2. One student improvises the following rhyme (all students sing the last line together)

Will you be my partner?
Fishes in the sea
Splish splash water
Please pick me

As students sing, the teacher should keep a simple bordun to keep everyone on track. That keeps everyone on the same page tonally. It’s also helpful to have the class pat a steady beat as a student improvises.

Here’s an example of what students might come up with:

 
Ickle Ockle La Improvisation 4ldpi.jpg
 

Click here to download the slides.


Victoria Boler | Sequencing Improvisation

With all these activities, I recommend gradually sequencing down to individual improvisation. I like to move from the whole group improvising, and then after several steps, ask students to improvise on their own. Here’s my recommended sequence with this activity:

  1. Whole class sings the song, whole class improvises

  2. Half the class sings the song, the other half improvises

  3. The whole class sings the song, small groups improvise

  4. Students divide into partners. One sings the song, the other improvises.


Movement Improvisation with Half Notes

Who Has Seen the Wind?

Who Has Seen the Wind.jpg

I love this song because it can sound musically sophisticated, even though it contains a simple set of musical elements.

Improvising with Movement:

The goal here is to improvise with half notes using movement.

Depending on how much movement you already incorporate into your curriculum, you might want to sequence this activity by improvising and having students copy you. You can also have students do the activity seated, using only their hands.

The Activity:

Students tiptoe, step, or slide depending on the type of rhythm they want to create.

Notice that the first eight beats of the song are performed together. This contextualizes the rhythms of the song so students have an aural starting point. It also helps the entire class stay together as they create their own movements.

I designed this activity for students in half note preparation, so you’ll notice the slides use iconic notation instead of standardized Western notation. You can easily transfer the iconic notation to standardized notation when your students are ready!

Here’s one example of what students might come up with:

 
Who Has Seen the Wind Improvisation 4ldpi.jpg
 
$39.00

This activity looks stunning with students all performing their own movement improvisations!

It’s a perfect activity to add to a 2nd grade informance or other musical sharing program.

Click here to download the slides.


Pitched Percussion Improvisation with Do

Rocky Mountain

Rocky Mountain.jpg

Erdei, P. (1974) 150 American folk songs. Boosey & Hawks.

This is a song that was always in the back of my mind, but one that I didn’t start to love until fairly recently. The song has additional verses (that you can find here), but I tend to stick to the first verse only.

I’ve written more about how I use this song to improvise with the full pentatonic scale here.

Improvising with Pitched Percussion:

A significant barrier to improvising with pitched percussion is knowing which direction on the instrument is pitched higher and which is pitched lower.

Rocky Mountain Improvisation 3ldpi.jpg

To help with this, I often have students start playing the instruments in a vertical position instead of horizontal. That’s another reason I love using this song for pitched percussion: the mountain visual is perfect for helping students remember the pitch direction of the barred instruments!

The Activity:

The teacher improvises eight beats on a barred instrument. The class answers with the next eight beats, ending on do. All students sing the last two lines of the song in unison.

 
Improvisation  2ldpi.jpg
 

One of the important things you can do to get your students more comfortable with improvising is to improvise yourself in front of them. This shows what a “good” improvisation sounds like, and it takes some the pressure off what could otherwise be an intimidating process.

I recommend starting this process by clapping improvised rhythmic patterns instead of jumping straight to barred instruments. In general, we almost always want to start with body percussion before transferring musical material to instruments!

Here’s one example of what students might come up with:

 
Rocky Mountain Improvisation Example 2nd Grade
 

Click here to download the slides.


Unpitched Percussion Improvisation with Takadimi

Tideo

Tideo has two games my students love!

Tideo.jpg

Brummitt, D & Choksy, L. (1987). 120 singing games and dances. Prentice Hall Inc.

The first game works great for younger players. Students stand in a circle with their arms above their heads to create “windows.” One player skips around the circle until m. 7 (jingle at the window). At that point, the student skips in a circle around the closest student (going through the windows). The chosen student follows the first student around the circle, and the game continues until all the students in the circle have been chosen.

However, my preferred activity with this song is a play party. It’s great for older beginners, and I've also used it successfully at the 2nd grade level.

Students create an inner and outer circle, with partners facing each other 

  • Every "Skip one window" - outside circle passes one person to the right

  • Every "Tideo" - pat, clap, clap partners hands

  • Every "Jingle at the window" - switch places with partner so outside circle is on the inside, and inside circle is on the outside.

Improvising with unpitched percussion:

This activity can be done with virtually any type of hand drum - tubanos, djembes, or congas all work great!

You can also expand the activity to include other unpitched percussion instruments as well, as long as your tempo is not too fast. Consider maracas, triangles, tambourines, or jingle bells.

The Activity:

In a circle, each student improvises four beats, the class responds with “jingle at the window, tideo.”

Like the process for Rocky Mountain, I recommend having students play their improvisations on body percussion before transferring to instruments.

 
Tideo Improvisation 2ldpi.jpg
 

Here is an example of what students might come up with:

 
TIDEO Improvisation 3ldpi.jpg
 

Click here to download the slides.


Musicians in 2nd grade have so much musical information they have gathered - both inside and outside the music classroom!

Through movement, singing, barred instruments, and unpitched percussion, students have an opportunity with these activities to show what they know in a fun, play-based way.

Improvisation Sequences for Elementary Music

In the last few posts, we looked at some of the things to consider before jumping into improvisation activities. Now we’ll talk about some great ways to approach improvisation in elementary music.

Read more about improvisation here and here.

Improvisation can be intimidating to teach. This might be because it’s different from other skills we work with as educators.

Skills like imitation, reading music, and writing music are concrete. Students will understand right away if they have achieved the purpose of the activity or not.

When we compare that to improvisation, we see the potential results are much more open-ended. This can make it challenging for the students to know if they have achieved the purpose of the activity, or if they have done it “right.”

It can also make it challenging for us to know if they have achieved the purpose.

What parameters could we put around the activity to guide student responses? Will we be satisfied with any musical output from our students? Getting clear on your structure will help not only with the flow of the activity, but also with classroom management.

So here are some of my favorite structures for improvisation. Each blueprint can be adapted to work with a different grade level, concept, or medium.

 
Victoria Boler | Improvisation Activities
 

1. Here Comes a Bluebird:

The Song:

My 1st and 2nd graders are always thrilled when we pull this song out!

Game:

Students stand, with hands joined in a ring. One student walks in and under the arches. At “take a little partner,” this child takes a partner and with two hands joined they face each other. They gallop out through the opening where the child was taken from the ring and back again, or they dance the same around the ring. The first child joins the ring. The student who was chosen is the next bluebird and the game begins again.

 
 

The Purpose:

  • Grade: 1st or 2nd

  • Musical Focus: Improvising quarter and eighth notes, or improvising quarter notes, eighth notes, and half notes. The decision will depend on what rhythmic elements you focus on the most, and where you are in your personal curriculum.

  • Student Readiness: Before doing this activity, make sure your students have a thorough understanding of steady beat, rhythm, rhythm vs beat, and quarter notes / eighth notes. If you choose to use this activity to practice half notes, it would be ideal for students to be in the half notes practice phase.

You can read more about writing your music curriculum here, here, or here. You can also find an editable curriculum outline in The Planning Binder.

The Process:

You could go through this whole process in one class, or break it up by doing steps 1 - 4 in one class and steps 1, 5, and 6 in another class.

Here+Comes+a+Bluebird+Improvisation
  1. Sing the song and play the game

  2. Clap the rhythm of the words to phrases one and three. Sing phrases two and four in your head.

  3. Extract the rhythm to phrases one and three.

  4. Check your answer

  5. Clap the rhythm to phrases 1 and 3. Improvise phrases 2 and 4 on body percussion.

  6. Discuss the rhythm combinations you could include in the improvisation.

Google Slides

These slides walk through the process for this activity. Scroll through the images to view the sequence.

 
 
 

You can grab the Google Slides presentation below. I send resources like this to my email list once or twice a month.

Google Slides Presentation.png

Extension:

In Here Comes a Bluebird, students clap part of the song, and improvise the other part on body percussion. You could certainly leave it there! Body percussion is a musical destination in and of itself.

But you could also transfer the improvisations to pitched percussion (xylophones, metallophones, and glockenspiels) or unpitched percussion (especially certain kinds of hand drums, but also cabasa, triangle, or rhythm sticks).

 

Transferring to other song materials:

This is a “fill in the blank” improvisation activity that could be used virtually with any song.

A helpful element to look for if you choose to apply this to another piece of material is some sort of repeating structure in the songs (ABAC, ABAB, etc.). Students can make up the part that stays the same, or make up a new version of the part that’s different.



2. Rocky Mountain

 
Victoria Boler Rocky Mountain
 

This activity for Rocky Mountain has a melodic focus instead of a rhythmic focus.

I designed the activity to be used with barred instruments. However, you could also use with with another tonal instrument, such as the voice or recorder. If you choose to go the vocal route, add in some work with vocal patterns by isolating portions of the song (“Rocky mountain rocky mountain,” “Do remember me,” “Rocky Mountain High”). Vocal improvisation relies much more heavily on the ear, so students will find the most success by using tonal patterns in their improvisations.

The Purpose:

  • Grade: 3rd (depending on your curriculum!)

  • Musical Focus: Re practice, or full pentatone practice

  • Student Readiness: This activity is designed for use on barred instruments, so students will have the most success if they’re comfortable with using both hands as they play, playing in the center of the bar, and bouncing their mallets. In other words, if they have experience with how to best play the instrument, their focus won’t be divided between both the technical parts of sound production and improvising a melody. They should also be very secure with quarter notes, eighth notes, and quarter rests.

The Process:

As you click through the slides below, you’ll notice there’s an emphasis on the rhythm of the song before students improvise the melody. That’s intentional.

Even through the focus of the activity is melodic improvisation, students need to be grounded in the structural elements of the piece. Those structural elements come from the rhythm of the song. A foundation in the rhythmic structure keeps the students on track as they play - it tells them when to stop and start their improvisations, and when it’s time to pay special attention to specific pitches at the end of each phrase.

The slides below go through the process I recommend for sequencing this activity. I suggest breaking the activity up into more than one lesson.

Rocky+Mountain+Improvisation10.jpg
  1. Sing the song while keeping the rhythm or the beat

  2. Figure out the rhythm of the song

  3. Check your answer

  4. Create movement to represent the contour of different mountain ranges

  5. Sing the song while you trace the contour of the mountain ranges

  6. Figure out the solfege

  7. Check your answer

  8. Create your own mountain range by placing the rhythm on the barred instruments. Once partner claps the rhythm while the other improvises a melody.

  9. Discuss qualities that you enjoyed in your melody.

 
 
 

You can grab the Google Slides presentation below. I hate having a messy inbox, so I only send resources like this one that I would be thrilled to get as well!

Victoria Boler Improvisation Rocky Mountain

Extension:

You’ll notice the ending to this improvisation lesson is open-ended. You could leave it as an improvisation (how the slides end). Or you could transition to a composition activity by inviting students to write down their improvisations in standard notation.

The choice is yours!

Transferring to Other Materials:

This activity for Rocky Mountain has rhythms on the simple side for students following my curriculum. That makes it easier to focus on the melodic structure in this improvisation activity. The rhythmic form of the song also includes repetition (AABB), which is another helpful component. If you’re looking to transfer this activity to another song, simple rhythms and repetition will be your friends!



3. I Got a Letter This Morning

 
I Got a Letter This Morning.jpg
 

The final improvisation in this activity happens in rondo form. Rondo form is ideal for many types of improvisation because it keeps everyone involved in the music. All students sing the main song. Then, two students at a time (one in each circle) improvise four beats.

The sequence also gradually moves the performance expectation from whole-group to individual. Students will have multiple chances to improvise as a whole group, in small groups, and with partners before improvising individually. This kind of gradual narrowing is crucial to establishing a culture of safety necessary for improvisation.

The last key component in this activity is that the teacher models improvisation for the students. Having the teacher model creative musicianship gives students examples of how simple their rhythms can be. Many students are intimidated that their improvisation won’t be impressive enough, and the teacher has the opportunity at the beginning of the process to show that simple improvisations can very well be the most musical.

The Purpose:

  • Grade: 4th or 5th

  • Musical Focus: taka-mi

  • Student Readiness: Before students use this activity, they should have a solid knowledge of 16th note rhythm combinations, including takadimi, taka-di, ta-dimi, and taka-mi.

The Process:

  • Sing the song call-and-response style.

  • Students clap the rhythm of the words

  • Add a B section: “Open the letter, tell me, what does it say?” Students may choose the body percussion for the rhythmic question.

  • Practice reading three different rhythm cards as a rhythmic answer to the question

  • The class asks the rhythm question and the teacher answers with one of the three rhythmic answers. Students hold up a number on their fingers to show which one they heard.

  • The last envelope is blank. The teacher improvises a response, and students identify it as the fourth envelope.

  • The teacher asks the rhythmic question, and the students choose the response. They may choose a rhythm that is already notated, or they may improvise.

  • Divide the class in half - half perform the question, half perform the answer. Switch.

  • Divide the class by groups of four - each group of four does either the question or the answer. Switch.

Victoria Boler I Got a Letter This Morning Improvisation
  • Students find a partner and an unpitched percussion instrument. One person asks the rhythmic question on body percussion. The other performs an improvisation (not a written response) on the unpitched percussion instrument.

  • Divide the class into two groups. In rondo form, students sing the song, then improvise individually on unpitched percussion. Two musicians will improvise at the same time, but they will be in different groups.

 
 
 

These Google Slides can be used in your classroom right away, but you can also edit them if you want to add some steps.

Victoria Boler I Got a Letter This Morning Improvisation

Extension:

I Got a Letter This Morning is a simple song simply in terms of its form! You can add more rhythmic interest by choosing a student improvisation to be an ostinato. Students can listen to the whole class improvise, then come up with two patterns they believe would sound good together. Listen for rhythms that “fill in” each others gaps. That will ensure that the rhythms are complementary and keep up the momentum of the song.



I love these activities because of their balance of freedom and limits. Students are set up to be musical and successful. They’re also set up to be creative, and to let their unique ideas shine through.

My sincere hope is that these structured activities show students how improvisation is a natural outcome of their musical knowledge. In the sharing and group work of the activities, I hope students see and hear the value in the improvised ideas around them. There is a unique combination in improvisation of making musical decisions, and valuing the decisions of others. What a great job we have!

I’d love to hear some of your favorite improvisation activities as well! Comment below, shoot me an email (victoria@wemakethemusic.org), or find me on instagram (@victoriaboler).