Season Six
Episode 115
No Singing. No Instruments. Then What?
What we are able to do with students in our classrooms this fall keeps changing. I feel like the more I learn, the more questions I have. And the answer we’re likely to get is ‘I don’t know’ because truly no one knows. A major change this year is that singing and playing instruments in many schools will not be able to be done as usual. And of course in the music classroom this is a lot of what we do! But it’s not the only thing we do. And there is still much that we have available to give our students so that they can have the best music learning experience possible even with the limitations.
One of the things I did earlier this summer was make a list of the things I can do in the classroom. This was extremely helpful. If you’re feeling overwhelmed with knowing where to begin, this was the task that allowed me to start. It places the emphasis on the positive and gives you ideas for possibilities. I talk about this in Season Five Episode 112, but here’s a little more detail about some of the ideas shared in that episode that might be helpful:
Body percussion and movement
This is the one my mind went to immediately. My situation this year is that I will be traveling to classrooms on a cart to my students. Students will be in a chair/desk in that room for the majority of the day (other than gym or possibly recess) so they’ll be itching to move. I plan to begin every class with movement. It could be as simple as asking them to stand in front of their chairs (since they’d still be 6 ft apart) and copying my movements. Or doing stretches to music while sitting. The music could be anything - pop - classical - piano - rock - contemporary - old - broadway. Mixing up the music styles they listen to is important and it makes it fun. Not every 11 year old wants to stretch to classical music every time. Bring in appropriate songs that they relate to or that you love.
For body percussion, this could be done many ways. My favorite resource for this is Rhythmische Ubung from Carl Orff/ Gunild Keetman. Perform them for students - add text to the rhythms - combine two examples and create an ABA form by performing the first pattern again after the second pattern. Lots of ways to use it!
A second idea I want to do is to teach each cohort simple ostinati patterns - some will be 4 beats and some 8. Students will learn all of them. I’ll assign each cohort a pattern to perform while I record them on flipgrid. Important here that you make sure that you have a set tempo - whether using a metronome or something that will allow each cohort to perform the pattern at the same tempo as the other cohorts. Then I’ll take the flipgrid recordings and using WeVideo, I’ll create a performance video. WeVideo is one of the tech tools I want to use this year and I’m still very much a beginner at it. If you want to hear about nine tech tools I’m planning to use - check out episode 114! WeVideo has different formats you can plug things into and is easy-ish to edit. Just takes some time, but seems more simple than some of the other high-tech editing programs. I digress - After making the WeVideo I’ll share it with students so that they can see what their parts combined created. It might also be a neat way to share with families so that they can see what students are learning. Advocacy is always a good thing and families enjoy getting an inside look into what their child is doing in our classrooms!
Books
I love reading books to students and I don’t do it enough. Using your voice expressively to share beautiful and funny and clever stories is one of the best things we can do in our classrooms. Since I teach middle school students I forget how much they love stories until I read one and see their attentiveness. Something I’m hoping to do this year is to read more in my classes. Consider incorporating books about dance, art, artists, performers, and music careers with older students.
Online Resources
Chrome Music Lab
Chrome Music Lab was one of my life-savers this past spring. It’s free, it can be used simplistically or in more challenging ways for different grade levels, and students loved it. I used SongMaker from the site for most of my classes. My favorite part was that they could save what they created and share it with me. A few ideas:
1 - spell their name
2 - chord structures
3 - ostinato patterns - layered
4 - pentatonic scale
5 - melody creation
PearDeck
This is something that I haven’t used yet, but have been learning about. One of the features is that you can have interactive questions in your google slides that allow students to respond to a question. One of the ways I am planning to use this is when I am teaching specific rhythmic content I want to provide opportunities on the days when students are practicing an element for students to listen to me speak a pattern - tap or pat a pattern - and then identify the pattern from choices on the board. Easy way to assess.
And one of my favorite ways to assess rhythmic elements is using speech. I believe speech is going to be one of our main ways to teach musical elements this year when singing is not allowed. If you’re not allowed to have students chant poems or short phrases as an entire group, consider doing echo-imitation with only one or two students at a time for each phrase. Provide opportunities for students to respond in this way (not all have to do it every class period - though that’s amazing if they can). Another idea is to speak a pattern and ask students to pat the rhythm of what you just spoke. Another way they can remain engaged. From here you might use pear deck to post a slide of rhythms. Speak a pattern and ask students to pat the rhythm back. Then ask them to identify the notation of what was spoken and patted by choosing the example from the slide. I believe that simple responses are going to give me better feedback this way because then every student is participating and I can tell who is understanding.
Soundtrap
Soundtrap is amazing and I loved using it in distance learning this past spring. If you don’t have Soundtrap available, you could use free programs such as audacity to do this lesson idea. One of the areas of music learning that I find I often neglect because I want students actively performing, singing, moving, and playing is composers and listening during class. Yes, they listen when we do folk dances or movement activities, but I’m talking about really sharing what they hear, feel, and visualize while listening to music.
The idea is that students would learn about a music topic (composer/specific song/artist) through research. This could be as simple or complex as you want to make it - you could create a short fill-in-the-blank slideshow where students add their answers in or for older students give them a rubric of things to find information about that can then be formatted into a short essay or poem. From here students will use the information that they’ve written down to record themselves reading their information/essay/poem. You could even take it further in Soundtrap by adding sound effects, music, turning it into a podcast episode where students give their podcast a name - an introduction - and music for transitions. After they’ve recorded themselves they can share it with you or you can download it from Soundtrap since the file will be shared with you. It’s another great piece for parents to see if you want to share their work with them through email or a secure site that your school uses. You might even upload files into a Google Form so students can listen to each other’s work and give feedback using beginning statements like: I wonder… I noticed… I heard… I learned…
Giving students a starting point for their feedback can help them think about what they want to know more about or share what interested them so that you don’t just get “I liked it” or “It was good.”
I hope you have a few ideas for where to begin and things to try in your classroom. Take care!
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