Teaching Elementary General Music on a Cart

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Season 1 | Episode 57

Show Notes

Any ideas for teaching on a cart? I’m saddened by the lack of space to move and play instruments.

I’m teaching on a cart this year. Any suggestions for easy-to-transport activities?

Teaching on a cart with no space for movement - students are at desks

 
 

Episode 13 - Teaching Music on a Cart

  • Two categories - logistics & curriculum

This is a creative challenge, and you are a creative person.

  1. Feel sad. Feel angry. Feel grateful for a space at all. Feel disappointed. Feel jealous. Feel all of them because they’re all real and they all make sense.

  2. Communicate with your administration - it is likely they have an office they use throughout the whole school day, and in that office they have a desk with a clear surface. If I were to ask that administrator to bring their computer and office supplies with them every 45 minutes to a different room, that would be challenging. It would also be challenging if there was no way to clear the desk surface where they need to put papers or their keyboard down. Instead let’s imagine every desk is built with blocks attached to the top, arranged so there isn’t room to put down their things. So instead of laying a notebook on the desk so they can write on the page, they would need to cut each paper into strips and lay it down on the desk in different pieces and write that way. Can they still write? Sure. But yikes their job just got a lot more difficult. Administrators want the school to run smoothly. Their job is to make the school run smoothly. Your job is to teach music. If you’re being asked to teach music but they’re taking away the resources for you to teach music…… The job becomes less sustainable. The school isn’t running smoothly.

Comparing Contexts:

Two things are true. This situation is not ideal. It’s not the best for you, which means it’s not the best for the students. And you can do this. This is a creative challenge and you are a creative person.

In a typical music room:

  • Sing greetings, do rhythm improvisation, sing a welcome song

  • Main concentration areas with first and second lesson objective:

    • Singing songs

    • Speaking rhymes

    • Playing games

    • Moving with structured and creative movement

    • Reading and writing

    • Improvising, arranging, and composing

  • Change of pace

    • Often a movement activity that may or may not connect to the purpose of the lesson

In a typical general classroom:

What activities can still work? Can we still sing? Can we read? Can we improvise?

We can do every single one of the things we would do in the music room. We just won’t be doing it in the same context.

What Activities Work on a Cart?

This is a question doomed to lead to isolated activities that don’t connect week to week. It’s adding unnecessary noise. Let’s find a different way to ask that question.

What activities work to teach ________________?

We’ve already seen that we can do the exact same musical skills.

Of those, which ones work with limited space and minimal physical apparatus? This changes the question as well. Instead of “activities to teach rhythm practice with no instruments,”

Which ones just need a quick adjustment?

Start by clarifying the purpose and the parameters.

Curriculum on a Cart:

Decide the purpose - our big picture goals have not changed.

The purpose can inform the structure.

Movement & Games:

  • Passing Games - Younger students:

    • All students pat a steady beat on their heads, shoulders, knees, desk, etc.

    • One student (or the teacher) at the front points around the room to a steady beat

    • When a student is landed on, they either go to the front of the room to point or they have another job, like a found instrument or a classroom instrument

  • Passing Games - Older students

    • Older students enjoy passing games too!

    • After you demonstrate, students might get into groups at their desk pods, or find somewhere else in the room to be in a group of four. Students play the passing game, or make up their own version

    • When someone is out, they stay where they are. The group that shows they’re ready plays instruments.

  • Folk Dances:

    • Tideo, a la Plainsies Clapsies

    • Alabama Gal

      • Circle around the parameter of the room

      • v. 1 - 2 ss on opposite sides of the circle walk to the middle and high five

      • v. 2 - walk eight steps to the right, then eight steps to the left

      • v. 3 - wring the dishrag four times

      • v. 4 - do the wave

  • Re-Imagining Movement Activities:

    • Non-Locomotor words: Balance, sway, bend, curl, stretch, swing, twist

    • Props: Cotton ball, scarf, ball

    • Body percussion

Instruments:

  • Episode 34 - Strategies for Sharing Instruments

    • Bring a few of your favorite instruments, not necessarily a list from the internet.

    • Think vertically about instrument choice - What might you use several lessons across multiple grades?

  • Prep with body percussion and give everyone a job

While Your Brain is on Fire….

Sometimes we need some breathing room while we figure out what to do next.

This is the time for the boomwacker play-along videos, the TPT listening lessons, the “just for fun” ideas from the internet. Do whatever feels easy and fun for one full week while you make a plan. You have time to figure out how to teach in this new setting.

Too Many Pumpkins

  • Read the story

  • We’ve talked about how to facilitate the passing game and sharing barred instruments

  • Use the level 1 and level 2 version

  • Listen for students using their singing voice and matching pitch. Listen for students keeping the same ensemble steady beat.

  • Do this activity while you make a plan.

I Have All These Instruments. Now What?

 
 

This conversation is about using percussion instruments, but it’s much more about the mindset to use when approaching these experiences.

Alicia spends a lot of time establishing the context in which these activities can take place, and creating the tone of the learning. One of the most valuable parts of the conversation to me was hearing Alicia talk about all the artistry and imagination that takes place before students even have the instruments in their hands. The instruments are the extension of the process - not the whole process in and of itself.

We also talked about classroom management with these instruments, and how conversations about classroom management are actually conversations about musical sequencing.

Alicia is someone who brings breathability to music education and I know you’ll enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

If you’d like to write Alicia a thank you note I know she’d appreciate it and she certainly deserves it. You can email her at aliciaknox303@gmail.com, and read her bio at the bottom of these show notes.

Keep Learning - Alicia Recommends:

Keep Listening:

In This Conversation:

  • 03:28 - It’s Alicia Knox!

  • 5:04 - Teaching middle school

  • 09:27 - Alicia’s pathway to Orff Schulwerk

  • 17:38 - What are percussion instruments?

  • 21:06 - What do I do with these instruments?

  • 25:40 - Sequencing with flexibility

  • 35:09 - Musical steps and classroom management steps to play the instruments

  • 40:50 - First Steps for Unpitched Percussion - “The Napping House”

  • 49:11 - “My kids could never do this” Backing up and moving forward appropriately

  • 57:32 - First Steps for Barred Instruments

  • 1:04:36 - Where to Learn More

  • 1:08:51 - Quick Questions - What’s the last fun activity you did?

  • 1:10:20 - Quick Questions - What’s the next teaching project you’re excited about?

  • 1:11:38 - Quick Questions - What makes you so good at what you do?

  • 1:12:48 - Where to find Alicia

 
 

About Alicia Knox

Email: aliciaknox303@gmail.com

Alicia Knox is a music teacher at St. Patrick's Episcopal Day School in Washington, DC. She taught for ten years at Colorado Academy in Denver, and then spent 4 years in Shanghai, China teaching at Dulwich College Shanghai Puxi.

Alicia has a Master of Music education degree from the University of Nebraska and completed her Orff training at Southern Methodist University. She attended several Master Classes at SMU and in San Francisco. She has been an approved Orff educator since 2017, teaching Level I courses in Pasadena and San Diego.

As a member of the American Orff-Schulwerk Association, Alicia has coordinated session hosts and monitors and led student performers. She has served on and presented for local chapters as well as mentored music education students. Alicia loves to sing and has participated in chamber and community choral groups in Denver, Colorado, and in Shanghai.

Rhythmic Building Blocks for Elementary Music

This is a little different from normal episode outlines -

This is a topic a really enjoy. It’s one small piece of the pedagogy process that opened up a lot of doors for me when I learned about it. I thought it would be nice to talk through.

As we’re wrapping up the year, this can be a nice avenue to explore for the first time, or to revisit if it’s already a well-loved favorite for your students.

We’ll talk about what rhythmic building blocks are,

What are Rhythmic Building Blocks?

  • Short fragments of rhythm

  • 2-beats (normally)

Constructing Rhythmic Building Blocks:

  • How are they created?

  • Where do they come from?

  • “Elemental” speech patterns

  • What is a natural rhythm to derive from the text? What is a natural rhythmic extension of the meter?

Traditional Building Blocks:

  • Ta ta

  • Ta-di ta

  • Ta-di ta-di

  • Ta ta-di

  • Ta (rest)

  • Elementaria (Keetman): monkey, elephant, alligator, anteater, snake

“Untraditional” Building Blocks

  • Keetman’s building blocks are useful for

    • Simple duple meter

    • A beat, a beat subdivision, a beat without a sound

  • What about the other durations we work with?

  • As the meter changes and the rhythmic set of our repertoire changes, our naturally-derived speech patterns also naturally change

  • Planning Binder 3rd Grade taka-di - Bubblegum Bubblegum

    • Bubblegum bubblegum (taka-di ta-di)

    • How many pieces (ta-dimi ta-di)

    • Sticky sticky bubblegum (takadimi taka-di)

    • So sticky (ta ta-di)

    • Pop! (ta rest)

  • Purposeful Pathways, book 3, compound meter - Birds of a Feather, p. 58

Notation and Building Blocks

  • Before notation is introduced:

    • Thematic text and an image

    • Thematic text and graphic notation

  • After standardized Western notation:

    • Thematic text and stick notation

    • Rhythm syllables and stick notation

    • Stick notation

  • Already with these options, our brains can shoot off several different directions.

  • What’s the purpose of the activity?

  • What will move students from the known to the unknown?

  • What information do we get from letting students choose their building blocks?

How might we use them?

We could break this category down by several different categories

  • Medium: Movement, speech, singing, playing instruments

  • Skill: Improvisation, arranging, sight reading, etc.

  • Pedagogy: Imitate, explore, label, create

For our purposes, because this is specifically a Schulwerk term we’ll explore it with that lens.

Imitate

  • I speak a pattern, you speak it back

  • I clap a pattern, you clap it back

  • I speak and clap a pattern while stepping a steady beat, then pause and let you speak and move as the echo

  • I speak a pattern while tiptoeing, stepping, or sliding to the rhythm, you tiptoe, step, or slide the echo

  • I speak a pattern with thematic movement, you echo with movement and speech

  • I play a pattern on an unpitched percussion instrument, you echo

  • I play a pattern on a barred instrument or recorder (single pitch) and you echo

  • I play a pattern on a barred instrument or recorder using two pitches and you echo

Explore

  • Students create their own movements for each card

    • (This is the length of the two steady beats, the key is not to make the movements too elaborate)

  • Arrange for body percussion as a class or with a partner

  • I give you a pattern with body percussion, you echo the same rhythm but improvise changes to the body percussion

  • We use the same pattern on the board but each student group comes up with different dynamic interpretations

  • I play a combination (single pitch), you play a the same pattern with an improvised toneset

    • This is improvisation, but the pedagogical focus here is rhythm, not pitch. The rhythm stays the same.

Label

  • I speak a rhythm combination with thematic text, you echo on rhythm syllables

Create

  • I speak a rhythm combination, you improvise a different rhythm back with speech

  • I clap a rhythm combination, you clap a different improvised combination back

  • In a small group, students arrange cards to create a B section to the known song. Students in their group choose if they’ll perform their B section with speech, body percussion, movement, or a combination.

  • In a small group, students create a rhythm combination and assign a body percussion combination to their order. The teacher or a student leader walks around the room as the class sings the main song. When the song stops, the group the teacher is in front of performs their rhythm for the class.

  • In a small group, students arrange cards to create a B section to the known song. Students arrange their rhythms for barred instruments or recorder using a known toneset, then write down their melody in graphic notation, solfege syllables, or the 5-line staff

Kodaly Pedagogy and Rhythmic Building Blocks

There are equally endless possibilities for Kodaly-inspired educators. We’ll only touch on a few here, but we can use our imaginations to think of options.

Many Kodaly educators break down the practice phase of learning into different areas of focus:

  • Reading / Writing

  • Partwork

  • Inner hearing

  • Memory

  • Form

  • Improvisation

Logistics the classroom:

My highest recommendation is that this happens within the context of repertoire, not as an isolated exercise.

Modeling appropriate options for exploration and creation is key. Start with the whole class first, then break into small groups.

Scaffold options - we don’t jump straight to thirteen options with movement and instruments. Scaffold the choices and model each step.

I could go on and on about all the possible ways to think about and use rhythmic building blocks. I have a whole list of other considerations and learning pathways we didn’t get to.

Using Repertoire that Isn’t Connected to a Rhythmic or Melodic Concept

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Season 1 | Episode 54

Show Notes

How often do you integrate other repertoire that is not just focused on preparing and practicing specific melodic or rhythmic concepts? Is it just when preparing for Christmas or Spring concerts?

 
 

What goes into learning rhythmic and melodic concepts?

What is the role of incidental learning?

How are these decisions impacted by scheduling?

Integrate other repertoire often as you want, and as often as you see it serving your students in the long run.

Incidental & Deliberate Learning Experiences

When we have deliberate learning experiences, we have a clear objective, we have an activity that meets the objective, and we have an assessment to make sure the objective was met.

Incidental learning is like allllll the learning that takes place around the target objective. Students are always learning. Students are always watching and listening.

Incidental learning creates the backdrop for aural awareness that students use later, especially in audiation, or making predictions. In audiation, students collect musical patterns, they hold on to them, and then use them as predictions on new situations. We need the patterns to exist authentically before students can use them later.

In my opinion, a convenient parallel is with language acquisition. Students hear and engage with language outside of the sight words they learn at school. The sight word objective still stays. But movies, TV, conversations with friends, books they’re read….. all these things play into an aural landscape of language.

This is a field of study I haven’t jumped into yet. Lucy Green and Ruth Wright have done work on a related field of informal music education.

What goes into learning rhythmic and melodic concepts?

Sometimes we talk about learning a rhythmic or melodic concept and we imagine that means primarily reading the notation. That’s true in some situations - for some teachers, that’s what they care about.

However, there’s another way to approach learning that’s much more holistic. When we prepare and practice musical concepts, we are engaging in singing, speaking, playing, moving, partwork, improvisation, arranging, aural identification, community collaboration, critical thinking……

Preparing and practicing involve so so so so so much more than figuring out the number of sounds on a beat and learning how to read it in standard notation. That’s part of it. But that’s the tip of the iceberg.

If we were learning how to read and write a symbol primarily, we would probably need a lot of additional music to round out our musical skills beyond reading.

Some people do divide the curriculum into isolated units on musical elements - like a unit on form, a unit on dynamics, etc. - I’ve created these lessons in independent contract work. And at the end of the day, these can be joyful, active music rooms where learning takes place.

Interdependent Elements

When we present music authentically, in a context, there’s no way to separate rhythm from melody from form from expression. We’re always using repertoire not connected strictly to the objective because that’s how repertoire works. The way to get away from interconnected elements and move toward isolated elements is to move to something like a sight-reading drill.

Rhythmic Objective, Melodic Unknown. Melodic Objective, Rhythmic Unknown.

Because there’s no way to isolate elements

Betty Larkin

Sulla Rulla

One, Two, Three, Four, Five

When Can I See You Again?

“Just for Fun” as a Curricular Objective

Very often, we’re using material that isn’t connected to a rhythmic or melodic learning objective. This is especially true for younger grades, but it applies to older grades as well. Warm up routines, change of page sections, or closing routines are all great places for this.

What happens after the fun activity?

Basically every day there’s something used that isn’t connected to a specific learning objective.

Sometimes it’s time to shake things up. Sometimes we feel like we’re in a rut and for our own sake, it’s time to try something different. Especially at the end of the year, using more folk dances, children’s literature, or other “one-off” units can be like a breath of fresh air.

Isolated listening activities, movement activities, instruments, etc.

These to me are like the garnish on top of the dish that brings the whole thing together. But if you were just to hand someone a fist full of cilantro and some salt, they might not feel happy about the meal as a whole.

An important point: listening activities and movement are absolutely a crucial part of what I consider to be a well-rounded curriculum. But again, these are movement activities and listening activities that are naturally embedded.

Scheduling Considerations

How often do we see students?

If we have a schedule where we see students several times a week, we might make a different curricular choice than someone who sees their students once every eight school days, or once a week for one trimester out of the year.

What vocabulary and learning experiences will best equip students to engage in music?

Concerts, Repertoire, and Curriculum

In general, my preference is for the concert to be an authentic showcase of what’s happing inside the classroom. My preference is not for learning to happen in a play-based, active way, and then have learning paused while we learn songs that are divorced from the musical learning. My preference is for the public-facing storefront to be reflective of what’s going on inside the store.

How Often will we Include Repertoire Not Connected to a Rhythmic and Melodic Concept?

It depends on what our rhythmic and melodic work look like.

As often as you want, and as often as you see it serving your students in the long run.

Extending a Short Piece for a Concert

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Season 1 | Episode 53

Show Notes

I am working on planning a recorder concert. My district requires that fourth graders have a final performance which I am super excited about. I just don’t really know where to start when planning. Recorder tunes are so short and I am not sure how to plan an engaging show full of that.

 
 

Creative Choice:

Improvisation:

  • 16 beats

  • Same rhythm, improvised melody

Form & Texture:

Ostinati:

  • Add rhythmic ostinati

  • Transferring rhythmic ostinati to pitch

Round

Rondo

AABB

ABA

Media:

Body percussion

Pitched percussion

Unpitched percussion

Singing

Student Perspective:

Scripts “Listen for this”

This is what our notation looks like, and this is how to read it.

Performance Road Map

On music notation, on a whiteboard in the back, on the floor of the stage, etc.

How do I Balance Planning for a Concert and Regular Teaching?

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Season 1 | Episode 52

Show Notes

Thank you again for the workshop. It truly made me take a deep breath and say I can do this. I have a question when it comes to planning. My school does a big Christmas program in December that is a fundraiser for my classroom. I basically stop teaching from Sept-Dec and always feel like I am having to play catch up from Jan-May. How can I still make sure I'm teaching the concepts AND teach the songs for the program? In reference it's 6 songs for each grade level: 3 for that grade level and 3 to sing combined with the next grade level.

 
 

This is such a common situation - every music teacher has been here.

What’s the purpose of this performance? What’s the purpose of “regular” learning? Where is the connection between the two? What feels good for you?

What is the ratio that feels good between the amount of learning and the polished showcase? Because these are very different events and processes. Let’s zoom in.

Learning in our music rooms is often: Active. It’s a little messy. It’s collaborative. It’s noisy. It’s play-based. It’s inquisitive. It’s creative. We use many media (singing, playing, speaking, moving) and many skills (singing, playing, reading, writing, moving, improvising, arranging, aurally identifying). Our learning is sequential (we learn something that becomes the jumping-off point for the next thing)

Performances are often: A little less active. Polished, not messy. Less collaborative and more teacher-driven. Still noisy, but probably not play-based. It might not have students’ creative stamp. The purpose is a showcase, and not the process of learning, so there’s not really a place for inquisitive thinking processes. We’re probably using one medium (singing) and one skill (reading). The showcase is the final, top of the mountain event, not the springboard for the next step of learning.

It makes sense that we feel tension in these two mindsets.

Which is better?

It depends on your goals.

Let’s approach this from three different adjustments we might make, like three hats to try on. Then at the end we can all pick out the hat that we like, and it doesn’t have to be the same hat as another colleague.

Story Adjustments

“I stop teaching and have to play catch up the rest of the year.”

Catch up to what? This is your program. This is your curriculum.

What if we were to adjust this story? What if I told you a normal curricular school year runs January through May, and the first part is just focused on collaborative performance experiences and building repertoire for the second semester? Would you play catchup then?

If this is something that happens every single year, perhaps the learning part of your year is January through May. The only problem is that we feel behind in the curriculum. But recall all our conversations about how we’re all curriculum curators - we get to craft the curricular experiences for our students and for ourselves.

Is there a way to do this large production and still have a year that is breathable, joyful, and intentional?

  • Breathable: Release the unhelpful statement: “3rd grade curriculum” and embrace the statement “my 3rd grade curriculum”

  • Joyful: There’s probably a lot of joy in this program! The joy in the classroom is independent of “ta-dimi by 3rd grade”

  • Intentional: We can choose repertoire for the program that speaks to our curricular goals, and we can emphasize sequential learning January - May.

Program Adjustments

Let’s try on a different hat. This time instead of looking at the story about the program, let’s see if there are any changes we can make to the program itself, so that our time in the classroom feels in alignment with our values for the classroom.

Adjust the songs per grade level, and choose repertoire intentionally.

Adjusting the songs per grade level:

  • Fewer songs = less time learning the songs

  • Combined grades songs don’t need to be musically sophisticated to be musically impactful.

  • Could we use songs students already know?

What’s our criteria for selecting repertoire? Where is the overlap between curricular goals and repertoire selection?

Maybe the grade-level songs are arrangements of folk songs that can include movement and student input, and really showcase learning. And the combined songs are the more performance-driven, stand on the risers and sing.

Could this be a song you write? Could this be a song you arrange?

A quick formula can be to take a folk song, rewrite the lyrics to be winter-themed, sing it in a round and add an ostinato.

Maybe you use a traditional performance piece, write a partner melody to accompany the song that uses melodic material you’re reviewing from last year. Maybe you add an ostinato that uses the rhythmic material you’re reviewing from last year. There are lots of possibilities, but the main idea is looking for an overlap between what’s artistically pleasing for the audience, and what’s pedagogically useful for students.

Structural Adjustments

Let’s try on our last hat. What if we reimagined what this program is from the ground up? What if this program was a showcase of the learning process itself, so it was completely aligned with the curriculum you’re crafting and curating for your students? What if instead of balancing concert prep with regular teaching, what if concert prep was regular teaching?

What if we could do an informance?

Does the sharing need to be in December? Could it be a group sing-along in December and an informance at the end of the year?

If it does need to be in December, could it be a December informance?

If this is a fundraiser for the music room, what would it be like for donors and contributors to see how their contributions are being actively used?

“These instruments were donated by one of our generous families in 2017. After many years we’re still using them to learn how to listen to each other and work in an ensemble. This is called a chord bordun and we’re using it in the song ____. You can hear more about what we’re learning at our informance on December 6th”

Planting Seeds

Start conversations with the people in charge. You are the music expert at your campus. You are the advocate for teaching and learning music. If you feel that there are more effective and student-centered ways to structure your sharings, this might be a conversation to have with your administration.

Wear Your Favorite Hat

You can change your hat next year, and the year after that.

We want the way we spend time in the classroom to be in alignment with our values for the classroom. And if we notice a misalignment, we can begin to move toward a different map for the year, either by changing the story about our performances, making tweaks to the existing performance structure, or reimagining the sharing event itself.

How do You Start Teaching Melody to Young Students?

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Season 1 | Episode 51

Show Notes

Can you start at the beginning? How do you go about teaching melody to grade 1?

 
 

There’s no single “how to.” Other pedagogues have other ways, other pedagogues would have things they tweak about this process.

This is basically the same way we teach melodic concepts to other grades as well! Here’s the process. We’ll spread these experiences out over several weeks.

Two avenues of curiosity for me: Active assessment and crafting a space for students to make creative decisions in pedagogy. Both of these deserve their own devoted time.

Active Experience

  • Sing and play games

  • This is the core body of work in the classroom

  • Establish a musical context: Students are gathering musical resources (tonal patterns, weighted beats in a meter, rhythmic durations, etc.) that they’ll use later

  • The teacher is the informer

  • Imitation (Orff hat) Prepare (Kodaly hat)

  • Assessment questions:

    • Do we hear students singing the song? (we’ll need to stop singing to listen)

    • Do we hear students matching pitch? Do we sing the target element in this ensemble context?

Apple Tree | Pala Palita

  • Sing and play the game

  • Share background information

Notice & Explore

  • Move to the melodic contour

  • Exploratory-Curricular Creativity:

    • Get curious: I have a curious question..... / What would happen if...

      • We mixed up the form, if we changed the words, etc.

      • Can you move to the melodic contour? Can you show the melody in your spot? While moving in open space? Can you show it with a partner?

  • What’s the highest / lowest word? What is it higher / lower than, compared to other pitches we know?

  • How many steady beats do you hear in this phrase? How many pitches do you hear in this phrase?

  • Which picture on the board matches the song? Why? How could we write it down in a way that makes sense?

  • Could we find the relationship on barred instruments?

  • Teacher as the guide

  • Exploration (Orff hat) Prepare (Kodaly hat)

  • Assessment questions:

    • To what extent do we use the element in multiple contexts?

    • Do we accurately describe the melody? Do we have explanations for how we might show it visually?

Apple Tree | Pala Palita

  • Apple Tree:

    • Pick apples (by yourself, then with a friend) to show the melodic contour of the first four beats

    • How many steady beats do you hear in this part of the song? (four) How many pitches do you hear in those first four beats? (two) Is there a pattern in our song with the words and the pitches? (yes - “apple” is a high pitch. “tree” is a low pitch)

    • Which picture of apples on the board matches the song?

  • Pala Palita:

    • Can you use your stick to paint the melodic contour?

    • Echo melodic patterns with different articulations. The teacher sings, students echo with a different articulation

    • Can you arrange the coins to show the first four beats? Could you mix up the order to show a new combination?

Establish Communication

  • “Real musicians call it so many things! Sometimes they don’t call it anything at all. In this class, we’ll call the high pitch sol and the low pitch mi”

  • Sing target phrase on solfege with hand signs (body solfege or Curwen hand signs)

  • “Real musicians write this so many different ways! Sometimes they don’t write it down at all. In this class, sol and mi are always a skip apart. If sol is on a line, mi is on the line below, a skip down. If sol is on a space, mi is always on the space below, a skip down.”

  • Sing target phrase and point to the staff

  • Teacher as the informer

  • Label (Orff hat) Present (Kodaly hat)

Explore Consciously

  • Use the element consciously to aurally identify, read, write, improvise, arrange, compose, and expand partwork skills

  • Explore with increased levels of independence and interdependence

  • Curricular creativity: Use the information consciously to create (arrange, improvise, compose)

  • Teacher as the guide

  • Create (Orff hat) Practice (Kodaly hat)

  • Assessment questions:

    • To what extent do we use the element consciously with increased levels of musical ownership?

 
 

Concepts vs Activities

  • It can be easy to look at teaching with the “how to” parts of the job: “how to teach this song” and “how to write this pitch” and “how to play this fingering on recorder”

  • This is a “how to” question about the structural concept of melodic learning. We’ll spiral this same process across the other grade levels, with other concepts, all using the process of experiencing through play, noticing with curiosity, and creating in community

Moving in Open Space

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Season 1 | Episode 50

Show Notes

Moving in free space

 
 

When we move in music, we actually need practice not bumping into each other! Physical awareness of our surroundings is one of those things that seems obvious, but it’s actually a learned skill.

Especially if we’re in a small space.

Non-Locomotor Movement

  • What do you observe about stationary movement?

  • Practice non-locomotor movement, as well as turning your fingers into people and moving with your fingers

Practicing Before the Movement

Model Open Space

  • Find examples of open space in the classroom

  • Find examples of closed space in the classroom

  • Why is it important to move in open space in music class?

    • We keep everyone safe

  • What should happen if you’re planning on moving to an empty spot and you see someone else moving there too?

Practice Open Space

  • Practice moving with the teacher and another student

    • The rest of the class uses a steering wheel to pretend they’re moving around the room while staying in their spots

  • Practice with larger groups and then the whole class

  • The teacher is the narrator

Reinforce Open Space

  • The teacher is the narrator

    • “I saw someone change directions because there was someone else moving to their same spot!”

    • “I saw someone walking with walking feet and looking up with their eyes”

    • “I can see a lot of movers on one side of the room and a few students in open space on the other side”

  • Training is ongoing

  • Recall the first time someone told you how to play recorder

Locomotor Movement: Open Space

A lot of this has to do with limiting the timeframe for moving around the room.

Walk and Stop

  • Performed by Ella Jenkins

  • Sing non-locomotor

  • Half the class watches, half the class moves. Switch jobs

  • Vary the length of the movement time (“walk and you walk and you walk and you walk and you walk….), as well as the tempo

  • Alter movement in open space, and “velcroing” feet to the floor

    • Shake / run / slide / roll

Highway Number One

  • Move in place (non-locomotor) and pretend to drive

  • Practice driving and stopping

Hey Betty Martin

  • Sing and freeze

Down to the Baker’s Shop

  • Sourced from Holy Names database

  • Sing non-locomotor

  • Move on the movement words, stand still on the non-movement words

Bubblegum Bubblegum

  • Play the game (seated, non-locomotor)

  • Put your body in a bubble

  • Play game while walking around the room (the teacher goes around seating chart or points to students as they walk)

    • When you’re out, keep a steady beat on an unpitched percussion instrument

Rhythm Movement Echoes: Zapatitos Blancos

  • Speak and play game

  • The teacher claps combinations of long and short sounds. Students tiptoe and step around the room as an echo

  • The teacher claps combinations of long and short sounds. Students improvise their own response with tiptoes and steps

Incorporating Recorders into Elementary Music Curricula

How do you incorporate recorders into your curriculum? I need to incorporate recorders with my 3rd graders and I love using your resources as it has made music so fun for my students, so I am just trying to figure out the best way to add them. Thanks for any suggestions!

 
 

Naturally Embedded vs Isolated Units

  • Necessary “focus” time

  • Goal is transfer of musical understanding across multiple melodic media (voice, movement, barred instruments, recorder)

  • “how to play recorder” vs “how to use recorder as a tool for collaborative musicianship and critical thinking”

    • I would have a different take if I considered myself a recorder teacher

Where Have We Been?

  • If we’re taking an integrated vs isolated approach, what are we involving recorders in?

  • What melodic experiences do we expect students to already have?

  • What conscious knowledge of steps and skips do we expect students to already have?

  • Possible 3rd grade examples:

    • Experiences: Singing, playing, and moving to many songs in many tonal contexts

      • In the background to provide a tonal framework for conscious knowledge

    • Conscious knowledge: Aurally identify, read and write in different representations, consciously use in improvisation, arranging, and compositions, multiple partwork experiences

      • Sol mi la

      • Mi re do

      • Low la

Another Melodic Instrument

  • Students can choose if they’ll play their answer on recorder or barred instruments.

  • You might also have two or three students behind an instrument, all three have recorders, and they just take turns rotating around the instrument.

  • (Episode 34)

Early Experiences

  • Holding the instrument

  • Appropriate airflow

  • List of things to try if we squeak

    • Less air

    • All holes are covered

Rhythmic Integration

  • Consider incorporating with rhythmic experiences first instead of melodic experiences

    • Students play a steady beat in a game

      • Consider songs and rhymes like Bubblegum Bubblegum

    • Students play an ostinato on the fifth in a song

    • Students have a rhythmic conversation, similar to the warm up routine

    • Students echo or improvise a B section using rhythmic building blocks

      • Choose to respond with the following fingerings: (___ ___ ___)

  • Repertoire:

    • Use classroom repertoire, including pop music

  • What are we already teaching? How could another instrument be used to teach the concept?

Expanding to Melodic Experiences

  • Adding melodic elements:

    • Students improvise a melody using a specific set of pitches in a rhyme (like 2 4 6 8)

    • Students add a melody to rhythmic building blocks

    • Students echo with pop music in the background

  • Alabama Gal and Old Mister Rabbit examples

    • Rhythmic building blocks

Notably Absent….

  • Notation with absolute pitch names isn’t used here

  • We don’t need to introduce notation until it makes sense in a student’s musical world to introduce notation

    • Western notation is not the point, musical understanding and transfer of musical concepts to many different settings is the point

  • Eventually, we would expect students to notice melodic concepts by aurally identifying them. From there, notation on the staff might be used and students can make connections about steps and skips on a barred instrument versus steps and skips on the recorder


Music Assessment in the Real World (4 Assessment Questions)

 
 

In the past few days I’ve had several conversations about assessment that I think are really interesting. This is one of my favorite topics for two reasons.

  • I love teaching in a way that actually works, and that drives learning forward. We can’t have forward motion and growth without assessment.

  • I think this is a topic that is commonly misunderstood. So when we can talk about assessment in the real world, not assessments that we take for our grad or undergrad professors, or assessments that we take for our principals, that’s exciting to me.

I had planned to talk about recorders in the curriculum, but that will wait till next episode.

We’ll talk about assessment questions and then I have a discount on my own assessment course for you if you’re interested. It’s something I’m really proud of because I worked really hard on it, and in my opinion it bridges some of the gaps between assessment in teacher training courses, and assessments in real life. The underlying foundations of all these questions are addressed in the course so if this topic is fun and helpful, you might enjoy the course.

Grading Young Musicians

I hate grades so much, especially for 1st grade. Especially when so much of their progress is dependent on their development. I wish we didn’t have to give grades for the littles. What are your thoughts?

  • What if the grades aren’t the problem? What if it’s the meaning we give to grades that’s the problem?

  • What if we make grades mean more than they do?

  • What if we had a more realistic picture of what grades tell us?

  • Grade: Documented quantitative data that show achievement, usually documented for a report card or administrator.

  • Shows: objective score of achievement

  • A single final grade for music does not show:

    • Effort

    • How much the student enjoys music

    • The extent to which they light up the music room when they walk in

    • The growth in singing voice the student has shown from the beginning of the year (depending on how things are scored / averaged - this goes into a conversation about standards-based grading)

  • Is can be true that a student doesn’t keep a steady beat. And it can also be true that their unsteady beat doesn’t say a single thing about their musicianship development, or their value as a human. It just means they don’t keep a steady beat right now.

  • But if we never notice they don’t keep a steady beat, we’re not setting ourselves up to help them.

  • With all that said, I don’t have a problem giving a kindergartener or a 1st grader a grade for music. Because I have a clear picture of what the grade can tell me….. which is…… not that much.

  • It’s a tiny picture of overall musicianship. A snapshot of achievement. So I view it as what it is: a tiny freeze-frame, not the whole movie.

  • similar to other quantitative measurements of so-called success, like the number on a scale.

  • Contentment vs Resilience

    • Dr. Becky Kennedy - What if our jobs as parents are not to make our kids feel happy all the time? What if our jobs are to teach kids resilience?

    • What if our jobs are not to make students feel happy all the time? What if our jobs are to teach students how to learn?

    • When we avoid data that drives learning forward, we send the message that there’s something to fear in a bad assessment outcome, or in a bad grade.

Assessment and Student Motivation

If you could speak about how to keep student motivation and confidence regardless of the assessment outcome, that’d be super helpful.

  • Do you tell students when they’re being assessed?

    • Assessments vs grades

    • Students don’t always need to know they’re being assessed. This comes back to our definition of assessment.

  • What’s the role of self-assessment?

    • Students can take ownership of their own learning. They can make their own observations and come up with their own solutions.

  • How often do assessments take place?

    • If we assess every class because we need to know what students need next, assessments are just another part of singing, playing, speaking, and moving.

  • What is the emotional meaning we give assessments in the classroom?

    • Assessments don’t necessarily need to carry a weight. They’re an embedded part of the learning process.

  • Who are assessments for?

    • Assessments are how we know what students need next. If an assessment makes a student shut down, lose confidence, or lose motivation, that may be an indication that I need to reevaluate how assessments are presented.

  • Are we using grades as leverage for good behavior or musical motivation?

    • Grades are an effective way for some students to meet our expectations. But if the threat of a grade is our primary behavior strategy, it’s time to reevaluate.

  • Is a grade the only way parents, students, and administration see the progression of learning? (consider an informance or other advocacy pathway)

Assessing Active Music-Making

Can you talk about organizing assessments (strategies for assessing active music making)?

  • Is it possible we make this harder than it is?

  • Start with an observable outcome - something you can clearly see and hear. Be in the room when students show the observable outcome.

  • The activity is the assessment.

  • This leads to a question about the documentation of the data, which is a different question.

    • One of my favorite strategies for active data collection is floating. Students are (for example) singing and playing the game to Bow Wow Wow. As students play, I may be listening for pitch-matching mi re do in the context of a singing game.

  • This is the question that the whole entire assessment course is about.

Assessing Effort

Why don’t you recommend giving a grade for effort?

  • Assigning motivation

  • I cannot see the amount of effort you put into something.

  • How do we know the amount of effort someone is giving? We need to ask, and use their self-reported data.

    • Self-Assessment: I did my very best today

  • Example: Partner leaves the kitchen dirty

  • We don’t know how much effort the student is giving, and what obstacles to external performance they’re working through.

    • Recall that student musicians are not short adult musicians - there is a specific trajectory of developmental challenges they work through every day that we might take for granted.

  • Suggests a level of omnipotence I don’t have.

  • I can assess that this student does not keep a steady beat. But I don’t confuse that assessment outcome with a value on the student themselves.

 
 

Assessment course discount code

There are some changes to this course I’m making in the next month, and part of the changes will be lowering the price. If you’ve already purchased at the original price point in the past, don’t worry! I have some gifts coming your way that I think you’ll like.

Concept Retention Across Several Lessons



 
 


When we have several days, a week, or several weeks between lessons, we probably will notice that students need assistance retaining concepts from lesson to lesson.

It can be frustrating to stand at the front of the class and know that you taught something, yet get blank looks back from students. Combine grace with strategies for increasing retention.

This is a continuation of the conversation we had last episode about missing students.

Student Perspective:

  • Time away with other specialists, sports practice, family events, etc.

  • We’ve said something multiple times in a row, they’ve heard it once.

Teaching with Presence and Awareness

  • Often discussed as self-care, but another example of how good teaching is good for everyone, including the teacher.

  • Teaching with awareness: Have I taught what I set out to teach? Have they done what I expected them to do? (assessment)

  • To what degree have they done what I expected them to do?

    • Are we singing the song without assistance?

    • Are we matching pitch?

    • Are we keeping a steady beat?

    • Are we playing the game smoothly?

  • Sometimes we think students are losing their grasp of concepts between lessons. That’s possible. It’s also possible they don’t have a solid grasp of the concept before we move on.

  • You’ve heard this song five times this week. They heard it once.

    • Sometimes it’s on the lesson plan, but we didn’t get to the song because the class was late or got picked up early or we got stuck on something else. A little squiggle in a lesson plan goes a long way!

  • Clarity on expectations (lesson objectives)

Transitions:

  • Between lesson segments (connecting with a story, sharing the same rhythmic or melodic pattern, etc.)

  • Between weekly lessons

  • One song over several lessons, such as:

    • Active listening and curious questions

      • (Add movements or body percussion to the song, “What do you notice?,” analyze the form, count how many times a word is used, etc.)

    • Students sing a portion

    • Add the game or a game scaffold

    • Students sing whole song without assistance

    • Add an ostinato

    • Add a partner melody

    • Transfer the song to instruments

  • One musical concept over several lessons

    • Sing songs, play games with the melodic or rhythmic pattern

    • Move to the melodic or rhythmic pattern

    • Notice characteristics of the melodic or rhythmic pattern (higher than / lower than, longer than / shorter than)

    • Notice the melodic or rhythmic pattern in other known songs and games

What Did We Do Last Class?

  • Explicit review:

    • Start with the scaffold from the previous class.

    • Use data observation to decide how far forward to move.

      • Teaching big concepts in bite-sized, actionable, observable pieces

  • Students as Student-Teachers

    • Tell your shoulder partner what we did last class with this song

    • Remind your shoulder partner how to play this game

What Did We Do Today?

  • Explicit times to talk about the goals:

    • Beginning of class

      • lesson objectives / learning targets / “I Can” statements

    • After the lesson segment

      • point out the connection between student actions and the objective

    • At the end of the lesson

      • “What did we do today?” “Type this in your brain and click save”

  • Students as Student-Teachers

    • Turn to your shoulder partner and tell them why la is on a space if sol and mi are on a line

    • Turn to your shoulder partner and tell them when we stand still in Alabama Gal

    • Turn to your shoulder partner and remind them of the highest word in Tideo

We can see how many of these review strategies fall into the category of “just good teaching.”

Long-Range Planning

  • Teaching more than one concept in a single lesson

    • First concept

    • Change of pace

    • Second concept

  • Both are in different stages of the learning progression.

  • The first concept is more exploratory, getting to know the element through play-based activities

  • The second concept is consciously known, and students are exploring it in many different settings with different skills

  • Compare with isolated units (episode 37)

I hope the rest of your week is as beautiful as you can possibly make it.

Teaching when Half the Class is Missing

 
 

When students are out of class, it can be tricky to know how to plan lessons. How can we serve the students in the classroom while leaving space for the musicians who are absent?

If music class is fun - if it feels like child’s play - it’s okay to go back and play games again. You feel tired of these songs faster than students do - good to keep in mind they need more exposure to a song to internalize it than you do as a trained musician, and they have a full week break between hearing the song, and they probably have more of a week break.

You can repeat lessons.

Camp out and go deeper into a concept instead of skimming the surface of a concept.

This is the time for small group work if that’s feasible given your physical restrictions. This is a time for songs that align with books. This is the time for a review project. This is a time to make videos of kids teaching so you can watch it in the next class. These students teach the class next time.

With the same core lesson:

Warm Up:

  • Core Lesson:

    • Sing greetings using the melodic toneset and rhythmic set you’ve picked out

  • Extend:

    • Improvise question and answer with the toneset and rhythmic set (teacher vs class)

    • Students turn to a partner and improvise with the toneset. Switch partners as time allows.

High Concentration and Secondary Concentration

  • Core Lesson:

    • Sing and play game

    • Do the core learning activity

  • Extend:

    • Review the previous class by having students turn to their shoulder partner and discuss what they did last time

    • Review the previous class by having a few students come to the front and give the presentation lesson

    • More time playing instruments

      • Add a bordun or play a different bordun

      • Play the melody or a portion of the melody by ear

      • Play an ostinato on unpitched percussion

      • With pop music playing, echo four or eight-beat rhythms on unpitched percussion using the target rhythmic element

    • Melodic and rhythmic dictation

      • In graphic notation

      • In standard western notation

      • Using manipulatives

    • Song connections to picture books

    • Improvise and arrange:

      • Keep the same rhythm but create a new melody with a partner at a barred instrument

      • Create an ostinato using thematic words from the song

      • In a small group, create a new version of a passing game

      • Assign a different unpitched percussion instrument to each line of the song

      • Improvise a new ending or fill in missing measures

Change of Pace

  • Learn a new dance

  • Move to pop music

  • Students choose a known game from a list on the board. Use the second class choice as a closing activity

Closing

  • Students choose the closing song

  • Review

  • Review and explain to a shoulder partner

  • Review and video a student explaining the key concepts of the lesson to show next class or put on Seesaw

Program Advocacy and Quality Time

Seesaw videos for students to watch at home

  • Part of the informance preparation process, but also makes for a convenient advocacy piece and a review opportunity

Small class sizes are a blessing. When I was in early elementary school, one of my aunts would take all the cousins on individual dates. As someone whose love language is quality time, this was a huge win for me, especially because I’m from a big family and quality time with adults was pretty rare.

So what if this is quality time with a smaller group of students than we normally see?

Teaching Melody to Older Beginners without Barred Instruments

Our example today is going to revolve around teaching melodic patterns that use low la. This is at the request of a friend inside The Planning Binder. She’s starting a music program at a school that hasn’t had music in years and years, so she’s in the process of getting barred instruments. With her older beginners, she noticed they’re having trouble figuring out pitch relationships and noticing melodic contour in patterns using mi re do and low la.

 
 

Instruments and Older Beginners

  • Self-efficacy and singing: Generally, we see a higher interest in singing in younger grades and a lower interest in singing in upper grades

  • The body is the first instrument

  • Transfer melodic understanding to an instrument

Melodic Curricular Sequence for Older Beginners

There’s a step-by-step series of melodic concepts in our curriculum outline. There’s also a step-by-step series of learning events that are outlined in the concept plans. Let’s start with the curricular sequence and then jump to the learning progression.

  • There are many options here! What repertoire makes the most sense for your students’ musical background and musical preferences? (Probably not sol and mi)

  • Do re mi - low la - low sol - sol - la (ABC - Jackson 5)

  • Do re mi - sol - la

  • If we’re having trouble with low la, it’s a good idea to be curious about how we were understanding do re mi. This is a melodic sequence because our future understandings depend on how we understand the current pitch set.

  • You’ll see in the learning sequence that we’re comparing the known to the unknown

Melodic Learning Sequence for Older Beginners

These are the steps of moving from the known to the unknown when we teach melody.

Like all things in life, people do things differently. Different doesn’t mean wrong. So if you’re looking for a framework, give this one a go. This is aligned with the Kodaly concept - this isn’t something I invented. This would all be under the umbrella of preparation in the Kodaly concept - we’ll talk more about adjusting the process in a moment.

  1. Can we sing the melodic element tunefully?

    • This happens in the context of repertoire, which is why so many teachers talk about the repertoire being the curriculum. The repertoire is the context.

    • With older beginners, a good formula is singing + ____(body percussion, drums, movement, game) ___ = singing

    • Singing is still an important first step to melodic understanding because we use the body as the first instrument.

    • Are we matching pitch?

    • This is why universities use sight singing and not sight reading as aural training. The voice is the most direct representation of what’s happening in our brains because there’s not a transfer instrument to type like on a barred instrument. (To be clear, we won’t be reading the new element in standard Western notation in this stage of the learning process, but we’re working on sound before sight.)

    • Low La Example: Sing and play the game to Big Fat Biscuit

  2. Can we show the melodic contour through movement?

    • Body percussion, solfege hand signs (with an invented sign for the new element), melodic contour, pointing to melodic contour, pointing to a barred instrument visual placed vertically.

      • The vertical placement is important because this shows the outline of steps and skips

    • Low La Example: In Big Fat Biscuit, put “chew belew” on body percussion with a partner in a way that matches the melodic contour. In The Planning Binder concept plan for low la, this is something we did with Alabama Gal (“Come through in a hurry”)

  3. Can we notice the melodic element and describe it?

    • Is it higher or lower than x?

    • How many times in the song or the phrase do you hear a pitch lower than x?

    • What is the lowest / highest pitch in the song or phrase?

    • Does this melodic phrase have a twin or double agent in another song? (Such as “sing about the sea” from Sea Shell and “do remember me” from Rocky Mountain)

    • Low La Example: Aurally identify do re mi in “big fat biscuit.” Which direction does the melody move in “chew belew?” (down, then up, like a smiley face) Is the space between the pitches like the pitches are skipping or stepping? (skipping) Articulate that the low pitch is lower than do (we know that because we already know what do re mi sounds like. We can hear that “chew” is do. We know the next pitch is lower. Therefore, it’s lower than do.)

  4. Can we show it visually?

    • Barred instrument visual, graphic notation, stairsteps, tone ladder

      • Which phrase on the board matches the target phrase?

      • Drag the icon higher or lower to match the melodic contour

      • Many people would stop here and label the element. I like that. I do that often.

    • Figure out pitches on a barred instrument placed vertically (Playing by ear is really important to me. Beatles documentary)

      • This uses aural skills and visual skills. Barred instruments physically show the outline of steps and skips in a way that a recorder or ukulele doesn’t. These instruments still have pitch relationships (like frets) but a barred instrument is a more straightforward way to show intervals. When we figure out the pitches at a barred instrument, we’re using our visual cues of high and low pitches, just like we would visually place a melodic contour phrase on the board.

    • Low La Example with barred instruments: Play “big fat biscuit, chew belew” on barred instruments. We already know that chew belew is “do - skip lower - do” so when we place a barred instrument vertically and I tell you do is on F right now, you can figure out that the low pitch is D because it’s a skip below F. If I tell you that do is C, we can tell that the low pitch is A. If I tell you that do is G, we can tell that the low pitch is E. With the barred instrument placed vertically, we just need to know the pitch relationships.

    • Low La Example with boomwhackers: Play “big fat biscuit, chew belew” on boomwhackers. Students line up with boomwhackers from low to high (the teacher can help, but notice that the low pitches are longer and the higher pitches are shorter. This is exactly the same as our barred instrument.) Use a human xylophone to play the melody.

    • Low La Example with body percussion: Play “big fat biscuit, chew belew” on body percussion. Four students line up with a body percussion level from low to high: stamp, pat, clap, snap. Use a human piano to play the melody.

A Quick Word on “Methods”

Within each step of this process, we can be creative and give students choice about arranging and improvisation. In my opinion, this isn’t a Kodaly sequence for Kodaly people. It’s a sound framework that can live differently in many different situations. Imitate, Explore, Create is compatible here, especially as we expand our work here and move into the practice phase.

Circular Progression or Linear Progression?

These are steps, but when we finish a step we’re not done with it. We’ll want to circle back in each class to review. For example, after we sing and play the game at the beginning of the process, we’re not done singing and playing the game. It’s just that these are mile markers we need to pass before moving on. We can’t hand students boomwhackers and say “play big fat biscuit” if students have never heard or sung Big Fat Biscuit. These steps are intentional in their progression, but there’s no way to isolate them completely.

Checkpoints

If this sequence gets stuck at any point, we’ll pause and go back.

We can also pause and go back with other songs that use this target element, such as Alabama Gal, Up Again (Dan Bremnes), and maybe an additional song.

We mentioned a curricular progression and a learning experience progression. If we’re having trouble with low la, that would make me wonder if students really grasped the pitch relationships with do re mi. Do we need to back up and play the game to Big Fat Biscuit more (step one of the learning progression for low la)? Or do we need to back up to the repertoire we were using for do re mi and review that instead (the previous melodic pattern in the curricular progression)?

Barred Instruments and Melodic Understanding

  • Experience the melodic element

  • Notice it

  • Show it visually

Barred instruments can come into play at any point in this process. But without a barred instrument, we’re still doing the process. Hopefully if you’re in a situation where you don’t have an instrument collection, you’re moving toward that direction. When we teach in a way that focuses on pitch relationships instead of isolated “how to play a a song on an instrument” we’re equipping students with what they need to transfer their knowledge from their personal experience, to an instrument, to the staff, to a new song, or to a new melodic creation.

Making the Most of Short Class Periods

 
 

You can do a lot in a short amount of class time!

For some grades, many people consider shorter classes to be better than longer classes.

A general rule of thumb my mom always shared is that the activity should be as many minutes long as the child is old. So for a 2nd grader, our activities should be eight minutes or so.

Smooth School Systems

32 weeks, 25 minutes each class comes out to about 13 hours, or about two school days. This framing can be helpful when we communicate to other support staff.

Bathroom breaks, water breaks, picking up on time, showing up on time, etc.

These solutions start with clear communication. Your administration’s job is to solve problems and make the school run smoothly.

We can’t control a teacher being late to drop off the class. We can control what we do with the class that we have in front of us. So let’s talk about that.

Every Moment Counts:

Teacher talking - most classes are taken up with teachers talking. This goes in the category of things we can control. Here are some things to expand or add to your collection of strategies:

  • Classroom routines and procedures

  • Hand signs (sit, stand, focus, rest position, etc.)

  • Visuals and written directions

  • Write out the wording of questions

  • Think through (and act out) the teaching process for games and activities

Just start singing - when a class is chatty, one strategy is not to wait for everyone to get quiet. Just start singing, and students join in.

Transitions - Music happens all the time, even between activities. This is something I’ll talk about in the next episode. Sing your closing song as students line up. Use notational literacy as a way to tie lesson segments together.

For meaningful transitions, we need clear classroom learning goals.

Clear Goals: Two Learning Objectives

Even with a short class period, I generally don’t recommend focusing on one single concept for the entire lesson. I recommend breaking up the learning into two lesson goals - one rhythmic and one melodic.

Breaking up the lesson with intention - two objectives to prioritize

Remember that we need different activities to break up the lesson anyway for maximum student attention.

With two clear goals to frame the lesson, we know what to do if our activities get cut short because a class is dropped off late. We can prioritize our time in short lessons.

What do we need to know or be able to do before we can successfully ___x____ next class?

This reframes the way a single lesson is situated - not as an isolated event, but as a small piece of a larger puzzle.

Part of a Puzzle, not Isolated

Threads across several lessons, not isolated experiences for a single lesson. This also helps with retention.

We’re not cramming everything into a 25-minute class. We’re looking at how the class segment fits in the overall picture of the entire year.

Sample Lesson Schedule

Inside The Planning Binder, the monthly plans are structured this way with specific minutes allotted for each lesson segment.

  • Opening: 3 - 4 minutes

  • Focus Concept: 9 - 13 minutes

  • Change of Pace: 4 - 5 minutes

  • Secondary Focus Concept: 9 - 13 minutes

  • Closing: 3 - 4 minutes

This comes out to 28 minutes, but I would adapt it to alternate between 8 and 3 minutes for each activity.

Arranging Repertoire for Elementary Choir

 
 

Singing Harmony in Elementary Music - Episode 29

  • Progression of rhythm vs beat

  • Ostinati

  • Chord Roots

  • Partner Songs

  • Rounds

Pedagogical Need

The choir arrangements I’ve done have always come from a pedagogical need.

There are many resources to purchase choir music, like JW Pepper. The thing that makes educators unique is that you’ve actually met the students who will be singing this repertoire. You know where they are musically. You know where they’re going next.

What do you want the song to do? What musical purpose do you want it to serve? If we were to place this song in your scope and sequence, where would it best fit?

IMO, upper elementary repertoire is limited, compared to the collegiate choral experiences many of us came from. And in my opinion, this gap is an opportunity - the best experts to compose and arrange for you and your students are you and your students.

Melody and a Bass Line

Song Examples:

  • Fais do do (Cajun)

  • Four White Horses

  • Rocky Mountain

  • Sing Sing Together

  • Vamos a la Mar

How do I Hear the Bass Line?

  • Different levels of music teachers: people still email me and ask for chord charts for songs. If this is a snooze-fest for you, skip ahead or think about listening to do this with your students. Elementary-aged students can do this. If you’re listening for yourself, listen up because this is a lot of fun.

  • MLT friends have a good grasp on this already

  • The bass line in this case is functional harmony - it moves us toward a cadence. Our pattern in these songs will be some combination of the home chord (do) and the away chord (sol).

    • The functional harmony is different than thinking about what would sound interesting from a chordal harmony perspective. This is something I didn’t always understand. I thought of harmonizing a melody in terms of the chords themselves, not the harmonic function.

    • And, in case this doesn’t go without saying, when we talk about musical intuition like “you can hear the melody leading ____,” this is within the lens of Western music theory, not all music theory everywhere - this is the framework we’re using.

  • You can probably hear it already. Give yourself two options - tonic and dominant and sing the song in your head. As you sing in your head, try to sing two lines of music at once: the melody and the harmony.

  • I find it makes the most sense to sing and establish the harmony, and then go back and use the theory to check. (“music must not be taught through a series of algebraic symbols”)

Ostinati

  • Easy way to add more interest to the song

  • Vocal, body percussion, sung on the 5th, melodic ostinato

  • Add more than one, let students come up with them

    • Examples: Who Has Seen the Wind

Partner Songs, Counter Melodies & Rounds

Improvisation & Arranging

  • Is there a place to add student creativity to the arrangement?

  • This is often done as a B section

  • Example:

    • Little Bitty Man

    • Engine Engine

    • Rise Up

Wrapping Up

  • Find a song you like

  • Where can we add to it?

Review and Assessment in December

Listen on

Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify

Season 1 | Episode 42

Show Notes

Let’s look at some ways to review and refresh December.

 
 

Today we’ll talk about creating a December review project for your elementary general classroom. This is my process but I believe it can be flexible and adaptable to your specific classroom needs.

Teacher Readiness:

December Review Projects

This is my process for constructing review projects. These are all inside The Planning Binder and I’m putting them up as individual projects so that you can purchase them if you’re not a Planning Binder member, but I’m also sharing how I think about putting these together so that you can create your own if you want.

We’ll take stock of what we’ve learned in terms of musical concepts. Then we’ll think about all the ways we’ve actualized those concepts through songs, games, and activities. The real fun begins when we think about how students might transfer that knowledge to a new situation and apply their understanding through improvisation, arranging, and composing. Last, we’ll talk about how we might use the data to plan for next semester.

Looking Back to Go Forward

  • What have we taught?

Songs, Games, and Activities

Transfer Knowledge

New Song

  • All new repertoire inside The Planning Binder for these projects

  • It’s not necessarily something you must do, but it gives us more information because of the transfer of knowledge from known material to unknown material

Stand-Alone vs Based on a Book

  • Younger grades vs Older grades

  • Older grades are instrumental, younger grades are songs based on a book theme

  • Song Creation:

    • What is the musical purpose? What musical concepts will this review? Where does it fit in the curriculum? Where does it lead?

    • 2nd Grade Snow Globe Song Example

    • 4th / 5th Grade Snow Storm Piece Example

    • Start with a musical purpose, then add skills

Improvisation and Arranging

  • This is where we get a lot of information!

  • 2nd Grade:

    • Sing and play the game

    • Arranging rhythmic building blocks

      • swirling, pitter patter, slow falling, falling down, cold

    • Improvise a melody to the rhythmic building blocks using the pitches from the song

    • In order to do this, students need conscious knowledge of the pitches in the song: sol la sol mi, and low, or do.

    • This goes back to the purpose of the project. You might choose to do free improvisation.

  • 4th / 5th Grade:

    • Arrange rhythmic building blocks using syncopation

    • Add a melody in la-based minor and notate on the five-line staff

      • Transfer from graphic notation, letter names, or solfege to the five-line staff.

        • Two topics for another time: Students come up with their melody first and write it down second. We don’t start with notation. We start with a musical idea. Second, students are not required to write their ideas in standard Western notation, and especially not right away. There are many ways to write a melody. Students can choose the visual representation that works for them, and then move to the five-line staff.

      • The purpose is review! How do students do with the transfer from graphic notation to the five-line staff? What if they’re not making that transition? This is assessment data.

  • Sharing in rondo form or with another student group

Outside the Music Walls

  • Sharing final videos with school community through Seesaw or the school website

    • Written permission of administration and guardians

  • Share with classroom teacher

    • Communicate ahead of time for the teacher to come a few minutes early

Review, Self-Assessment, and Next Semester Planning

  • Slides with all our songs, and a map of musical concepts and musical skills

  • Having a document of what you’ve taught and what you know needs to be reviewed can be helpful here.

  • Students choose their favorite activities to close out the classes in December

    • This gives them choice in the activities and it opens the conversation about what types of musical experiences they want to have

  • Self-Assessment:

    • Concepts and skill maps

    • “I Can……”

  • Next Semester Planning:

    • These were my favorite things: __________________

    • If I were the music teacher, here are the musical things we would do: ______________

Wrapping Up and Moving Forward: Creating Your December Review Projects:

  • Bare-Bones: List of songs and concepts. Students choose their favorites have a choice-day. Wrap it up with a team meeting about next semester

  • Extension: Use previously-learned songs to review concepts, but add a B section or other invitation for students to arrange and improvise.

  • Winter Magic: The most involved. Choose a book and create an original song based off the concepts your students are working on. Find a way to showcase their original musical ideas (using improvisation and arranging or composition), and share them outside the classroom.

Espresso Shot: Gathering Resources

Here’s one example of how we might organize resources for teaching 1st grade.

Let’s imagine we’re teaching long and short, or, the rhythm of the words.

We’ll start with a secure knowledge of why we’re teaching long and short. Where does the activity lead? What do students need to know before the activity?

Knowledge and Skills: The things students will know and be able to do at the end of their long / short experience

Repertoire: The context for learning

Activities: The actual learning experiences

Lesson Planning When You Have Too Many Resources

Listen on

Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify

Season 1 | Episode 40

Show Notes

One thing that I struggle with is the availability of too many resources! Any tips? I wind up feeling so guilty when I don’t get to a particular song or activity, but I can’t do it all…

 
 

1. There are a lot of opinions out there. 

  • The internet is open to anyone - there are lots of opinions out there 

    • How you should parent, what types of foods you should eat for a healthy diet, what style of clothes you should wear, how you should spend your money….

  • You wouldn’t accept anyone’s suggestion on the internet just because it’s on the internet. You have a set of criteria that you run those options by. 

2. When you have too many ideas: 

  • I have several documents floating around as I lesson plan. Too many ideas is the same problem as not enough, so I want to gather my favorite processes.

  • I have several documents floating around: 

    • Someday Songs - Songs I’ve found and I love and I have a broad idea of how they might live, but I haven’t plugged them in yet. I just don’t want to forget about them. 

    • “When You’re Out of Ideas” - processes I can use when I feel bored or burnt out in my work 

3. Lesson ideas have to live up to you.

  • Lesson ideas need to earn a spot in your curriculum. 

  • We don’t all think of ourselves as curriculum designers, but we are all curriculum curators. So we go through the curriculum process. 

4. Pinteresting like a curriculum curator  

  • Curriculum design process 

    • Values first - what are we here to do? Who are we serving? We need a clear idea of our why foundation and a clear idea of who our student community is. 

  • Where would we go from here? What does this activity lead toward? 

  • What is the prerequisite knowledge students need to have before they can do this activity successfully? 

  • Where are the opportunities for student choice and student ownership? 

  • Questions: Alignment and structure

    • Is this in alignment with my values and my student’s values? 

    • Where does this activity fit in the overall structure, or sequence, of the year. 

  • Am I drawn to the activity or the process? 

5. Moving forward: 

  • Clarifying values 

  • Get clear on your personal curriculum structure 

  • Have a landing page for ideas. 

    • Some ideas are beautiful for someone else’s classroom, and not the right fit for you. Some ideas are beautiful, and not the right fit for your situation right now. Some ideas are beautiful and you can use them as a one-off lesson that goes under a “just for fun” category. Some ideas are beautiful and you’ll use them in a way that is aligned with your values and the structure of your curricular sequence. 

  • We need a filter. In the same way we want to spend our money in a way that aligns with our values, we want to shop for lesson ideas that align with our values. 

Create your criteria. Filter lesson ideas through the criteria. Lesson ideas need to earn a place in your curriculum.



Espresso Shot: Experiencing Syncopa in Concept-Based Teaching

 
 

First Experiences:

  • Sing the song and play the game

  • Sing the song and walk around the room

  • Sing the song and create a body percussion steady beat arrangement or a body percussion ostinato

This is happening with all the different songs we talked about yesterday: in this case, Bump Up Tomato, Weevily Wheat, Surfin’ U.S.A, and perhaps another song like Alabama Gal and Bruno Mars’ Count on Me.

Where are we doing these activities?

We talked about a lesson structure in episode 37 on organizing the mus ic lesson:

  • Welcome song (and / or warm up routine)

  • Musical concept 1 (this is syncopa in this case)

  • Change of pace (this might be a syncopa game, another musical game, or something else “just for fun”)

  • Musical concept 2 (this would likely be a melodic concept)

  • Closing song (or closing routine)

Activities in Action:

In the November plans for The Planning Binder, here is how we’re using synco-pa in two of the lessons.

Lesson 1:

  • Warm up routine: This is labeled as teacher choice but I would do a pop song students enjoy and have it playing as we do our warm up routine

  • Musical concept 1: Synco-pa or ta-di—di - Surfin’ USA: Play the words “inside outside USA” on body percussion with a partner. We also do some critical thinking questions about the sounds we hear - are they even or uneven? (uneven) Which is the longest sound in USA?

  • Change of pace: Synco-pa or ta-di—di - Bump Up Tomato: Sing and play game, when you’re out you play an ostinato of straight eighths: ta-di ta-di ta

  • Musical concept 2: La pentatonic

  • Closing song: We can introduce Bump Up Tomato while students are standing in line

Lesson 2:

  • Warm up routine: Surfin’ U.S.A.

  • Musical concept 1: Synco-pa or ta-di—di - Bump Up Tomato: Sing and play the game (quickly) Clap the first eight beats. Identify the long and short sounds of the pattern: short long short - are these even or uneven? (uneven) Write long and short sounds above the first four beats. Notice where the words happen in relation to the ostinato: ta-di ta-di ta (rest)

  • Change of pace: Seasonal activity of some kind

  • Musical concept 2: La pentatonic

  • Closing activity: Seasonal activity, or another game

Notice how the actions students were taking in lesson 2 was built off of the actions they were taking in lesson 1. This is just two lessons but we can see the common thread between these lessons in terms of the rhythmic concepts.

The kicker, and the thing many of us have a hard time wrapping our heads around, is that at the same time there is a rhythmic thread going through the lessons, there is also a melodic thread.

Espresso Shot: Concept-Based Teaching and Synco-pa Songs

 
 

In the last episode we talked about structuring the lesson around musical concepts, instead of activities. Let’s think about some ways to apply concept-based teaching with upper elementary and the rhythmic pattern, “synco-pa,” or ta-di—di.

Syncopa (ta-di-di) songs:

  • Bump Up Tomato

  • Weevily Wheat

  • Surfin’ U.S.A - Beach Boys

  • Alabama Gal (or) Count On Me - Bruno Mars