Afternoon Ti

 Season Seven Episode 136 Soundtrap Rap Project Cheers to 2021!  I’m ready for a new year of new lesson ideas and thought I’d share one of the projects I’m doing with my students as we return back to school.  This project would be a really fun one to do at the beginning of the school year as well - it’d be a great way to get to know your students, what they like, and who they are.  Since I see my students in trimesters, sometimes I have to modify when I do lessons and introduce material so I decided to use this project to start off the new year with my fifth graders. I first saw the idea for this lesson in the Soundtrap Blog.  The original idea was created by Meredith Allen and inspired by Katie Wardrobe.  I took their amazing idea and expanded upon it.  You can find the links to both the Soundtrap Blog page - click on ‘That’s a Rap’ to see the lesson plan - as well as the Google Doc with the lesson idea from Meredith.  I highly recommend Mered...

 Season Six  Episode 132 Sequencing Rhythmic Concepts What grade should students learn sixteenth notes?  How long should we focus on a specific note value?  What should be taught first:  tika-ti or ti-tika?  The answer to all of these questions is “well, it depends.”  There’s no ‘must’ in terms of when students should learn specific notes or how long we should spend in making sure students understand the concepts.  Some years my students move at a faster pace and other years students demonstrate that they need more time practicing certain rhythms.  However, it is helpful to know the order that you will be teaching rhythms so that you know not only what students already know, but where they’re heading so that you can build sequential learning over many lessons. I’m going to share the sequence that I use with students and the why behind it.  Let’s start with the why. When we look at the musical pieces that we are using with students, we...

 Season Six Episode 131 Carol of the Bells We’re in our series on rhythm!  This episode is all about Carol of the Bells - you likely hear it as often at this time of year as we hear piano students playing Fur Elise the rest of the year.  This piece is simplistic and difficult at the same time.  The triple meter is awesome - a great way to emphasize strong-weak-weak with students, it’s usually fairly familiar for most students, they enjoy it and feel proud to be able to play a familiar piece.  Maintaining a steady tempo and not rushing can be a challenge with this song so it’s important to have students move to it, speak the text, find ways of doing things in the rests that supports movement through space so that they can feel the length of the rests and not rush.  It’s also a great piece to have students learn about motifs! In Episode 130 I shared about how the tech tool Pear Deck can be a great way for students to engage in learning.  One of the gr...

 Season Six Episode 129 Rhythm Systems: Ways to Speak and Count This school year I am unable to sing with my students as a result of Covid so I’ve been spending a lot of time on rhythmic concepts.  There are so many ways to count rhythms in music and reasons you might choose to use one system over another.  It is not helpful for your students if you use multiple ways to count using several systems because they will get confused.  That said, you may decide to use one system over several years with students from grades K-4 and then bridge your 5th or 6th graders into using the counting system that you know they will be using in middle school band, orchestra, or choir.  This can be helpful if students are used to one counting system in elementary, but your middle school music directors use another system.  Older students who are familiar with your system could benefit from having an introduction into the system they’ll be using in coming years in middle sch...