Pre-Composition Writing Practice

I don't know if this will feel revolutionary to anyone but me, but this year I tried something new that has made a tremendous difference for my students: before my students did their first composition activity in class where they were actually writing music notes with a pencil on paper, I had them practice just writing the notes the class period beforehand. I have noticed a huge improvement in my students' ability to get right into the task of composition in the grade levels that I've done this with so far!

Handwriting compositions is a very complicated task for a lot of reasons, and one of them that has become increasingly difficult because of changes in technology is that students are more used to seeing computer generated notation than they are handwritten notation. When they try to write notes, they will try to copy the way the computer shows it rather than the way it would normally look handwritten in pencil, adding extra thickness to different parts of the quarter rest for example. I've always taken time to point this out and demonstrate how to handwrite each one before they start writing, but they still didn't seem to get it.

I think the problem was it was too much information to process at once: I was asking them not just to think about how to write each note but also think about what they want their composition to sound like, and keep track of the specific elements they're practicing (how many beats they need in each measure, making sure they use at least one whole note, incorporating pentatonic solfege, etc). With everything else they were trying to think about at the same time, how to handwrite the notes became a low priority.

So this year I took some time to have students focus exclusively on just handwriting the different notes and rests that they had learned and would be using in composition. It was very simple and took 5-10 minutes with each class: I cut some regular computer paper in half, and gave each student a half sheet and pencil. I turned off slides so they were not looking at computer generated versions of the notation, and demonstrated how to draw each note or rest, one at a time, and told them to draw it on their own papers after each one.

By focusing on just the writing I was able to go around and fix those common mistakes like putting the stems on the outside of the noteheads for paired eighth notes, or weird squigglies for quarter rests, without having to think about anything else besides how to draw them. And the students actually really loved it, which I wasn't expecting! The 1st-3rd graders especially got so excited when I told them they could take their papers home, and asked if they could add more music notes at home- of course! They were thrilled with the idea that they could practice writing more music notes, which was an even bigger win for me!

It was incredibly simple to prep, took less time than I expected, and was more engaging and more effective than I expected as well- the next class period when I handed out composition worksheets students were able to focus on the considerations for the composition, like which types of notes to use and how many beats they need, rather than the mechanics of writing, so their composition process was much quicker as well!

Have you ever had students practice just handwriting notes? I've done this with treble and bass clefs before, but never done it deliberately with all the different notes they need as a precursor to a composition task, and I'm so glad I did it! As handwriting becomes more and more of a "lost art" it's so important for us to take the time to make sure students are able to do it well in our elementary music classes. If you want to see the composition worksheets I use that make it easy for students to focus on the elements they're studying, you can see my music composition worksheet set here.

Read more "Pre-Composition Writing Practice "

What To Do with an Idea

There are so many fantastic music teachers out there that share wonderful lesson ideas through publications, presentations, social media, blogs, and more, but what do you do with those great ideas when you learn about them? I remember going to music teacher conferences as a new teacher and coming back so inspired by the sessions I attended, my hands full of session notes and materials, and then setting that stack of papers on my desk to go through later and never touching them again. Or if I did actually try an idea, somehow it often didn't work nearly as well in my classroom as I envisioned it when I saw someone else do it. Here's how I think through whether a lesson idea is actually worth saving, and then what I do with the idea to make sure I actually end up using it in a way that is most likely to be effective when I apply it to my own setting.

1. Identify the purpose

There must be thousands, maybe even millions, of great lesson ideas out there that were engaging and effective for the person who shared the idea, but that doesn't mean it's going to be effective for me and my students in my setting. The first thought I automatically have when I see an idea is, "what concept or skill could this teach?". 

If I can't identify what skill or concept the lesson activity would teach, I think about whether it serves any other purposes: maybe it's a good attention-getter or time-filler I should add to my list of "keep it in my back pocket for when I need it on the fly" activities. Maybe it's a really fun way for a certain age group to explore music that I should plan to use for a reward day, at the very end or beginning of the school year, or on a weird schedule day when I need to do something different with one class in a grade level. Otherwise, I set it aside. There are plenty of other great lesson ideas out there that can serve a specific purpose that my students need!

2. Identify the conditions for success

If I can identify the skill or concept the lesson activity would teach, I also think about what the teacher or author did to make the lesson activity successful. What materials, instruments, classroom setup, lesson length, and other conditions were in place for this teacher, and if mine are different, will that impact the success of the lesson activity? What kinds of backgrounds are represented by the students and the teacher in the lesson, and who is in my classroom? Sometimes a lesson that was magic for one teacher won't work for me. Other times I may see a lesson modeled by someone with very different circumstances from my own and think, "that will never work for me", but when I stop and think through what made the lesson successful, I realize those differences probably won't affect the outcome, or I'm able to find ways I can adapt it to make it work for me.

3. Find its place

If I think through all of that and decide the lesson idea is worth keeping and using in my teaching, the next step is to find where in the school year, and with which grade level, I teach those skills and concepts. For me that part is easy because I already have the whole year outlined by skills and concepts for each month for every grade (if you want to see how I wrote all of that myself read this post, or get all of my K-6 yearly outlines in this set). If you don't have that all written out anywhere, start now! Make (or copy from someone else) a quick list of the major skills and concepts you're going to teach in each grade, and think through when in the school year you might teach the specific ones the new lesson idea would address. 

This is where I think having a place to "brain dump" ideas to cover a specific skill or concept in a specific month with a specific grade level is so useful. I keep a google doc for each month by grade and just jot down (or link if it's online) the lesson ideas as I come across them in the corresponding document. That way when I'm lesson planning for that month, I remember all the ideas I have for teaching what I want to teach! I suppose you could do it offline as well by setting up folders for each month/ grade and accomplish the same thing. The point is you need a method for organizing lesson ideas by month/ grade based on your yearly outline of the skills and concepts you're going to teach that month with that grade. You can see a free sample of what my monthly documents look like in this September set for 5th grade.

Just like concrete objects that you want to keep organized, you have to make sure you have a place for everything, and put everything in its place! If you find a new lesson idea you want to use and use effectively, take the time to find the best place for it in your curriculum and save it there so you'll remember it when you need it.

4. Choose Wisely

Once I save my lesson ideas in the right place in my curriculum, I have it exactly where I need it to use it in the most effective way possible when the time comes. But I always keep in mind, as I start collecting more and more great lesson ideas, that I have very limited class time to teach what I want to teach. As I'm planning my lessons each week, I weigh all of the options for how I can teach the skill or concept I'm working on and choose the one that I think will work best for the specific students I have that year with the specific circumstances I am working with that year (time constraints, changes in available materials, scheduling, etc). Every decision to add a new lesson activity is a decision to take something else out, so I'm always making sure, whenever I make changes, that I'm not losing something else important in the big picture of student learning by adding a new lesson in. Sometimes I have too many ideas and that's ok, that's when I need to step back and look at the big picture of what students need to know and be able to do by the end of the year, and make sure students have enough time with each of those things to accomplish that.

I know it can be overwhelming sometimes seeing so many great ideas being shared and not knowing how to use them in a way that actually makes sense- I hope this helps give you a framework for how to sift through everything and actually use the ones that will add value to your curriculum! If you don't have an organized, sequenced curriculum that will allow you to adjust and add ideas as you go like this, I highly recommend checking out the Organized Chaos K-6 Music Curriculum that includes everything I use in my own teaching.

Read more "What To Do with an Idea"

"Tutuca" Upper Elementary Hand Clapping Game

I recently came across a Spanish language hand clapping game that I can't wait to add to my lessons on improvisation with my middle and upper elementary grade students! It can often be much more difficult to get older students to improvise because they are so much more self-conscious, and games like this make it so much easier to get students improvising, and with this age group challenging games of concentration are always a hit! This could be a great activity to get everyone focused, or as a sort of team-building activity to get everyone listening attentively for a choir rehearsal etc as well!

The game is from an Argentinian group called Pim Pau, and it's called "Tutuca". Here's their demonstration video:

Essentially there are 4 words that each have an assigned motion to go with them. Players take turns saying a series of one or more of those 4 words, and then everyone has to repeat the phrase back with the correct motions while staying on the beat. If you mess up you're out!

The 4 words are all Argentinian foods, which I think my older students will enjoy learning about: tutuca is a puffed corn snack (learn more about it in this video), chipá is a cheesy bread (here's a quick recipe video), pororó is popcorn, and mate is a traditional tea made from mate leaves ("con" means "with").

For my purposes, I would make one small adjustment to say when students are making up their patterns, they should always do 4 beats, even if one of those beats is a rest, so the group is always counting 4 beats to know when to echo.

I will be using this game as a lead-in to my lessons on improvisation as part of the unit I teach on jazz in 6th grade. I plan to start by introducing students to the 4 different snacks by showing them pictures/ videos, then having them learn the motions associated with each word by saying the word and having them do the motion as quickly as they can. Once they can do that, I'll have them pat the beat on their legs and practice copying the patterns I make with motions. Once they can do that, I'll have students take turns making up the patterns for the class to echo, while still patting the beat on their legs. If there's time the final step would be to get in a circle and add the hand clapping on the beat, but honestly that may be a layer of complication that's not worth adding for the purpose of focusing on improvising patterns using the words.

Depending on how much time you can devote to these lessons, this could be transferred to instruments in a couple of ways: if students are working towards pitched improvisation like my 6th graders, each word could be assigned to chord tone on the xylophone for the group to echo back patterns students improvise, or if not, each word could be assigned to a percussion instrument, you can split up the class into 4 groups and give each student one of those instruments, and then students echo the patterns on those instruments.

I'm always looking for ways to get my older students focused and working together, and playfully improvising without feeling self-conscious, so I'm excited to add this to my repertoire! Have you ever heard of this game before? What other hand clapping games do you use with your older students? I have seen my students playing a game called "Tarzan the Monkey Man" that makes me cringe a little every time I hear it, so I'm also secretly hoping this one will catch on enough to replace that!

Read more ""Tutuca" Upper Elementary Hand Clapping Game"

Lesson Activities for Teaching Basslines

As part of learning bass clef letter names, I teach my 6th graders about basslines. They explore the role and importance of bass lines in music, perform and create basslines, and explore instruments that play basslines in different musical genres. This is a great way to not only give some context for learning bass clef but also explore basic harmony. Here are some of my favorite resources and lesson activities for teaching basslines.

It can be difficult to get students to understand the concept of a bassline when they are so used to listening to and performing melodies. One of the first things I do after introducing and practicing bass clef letter names is have them watch this video that visualizes the bassline in "Ain't No Mountain". It is SUCH a great way to help students to identify where the bassline is aurally when they aren't used to listening for it!

Next, to get them to experience and think more about the role the bassline plays in the overall piece, I have them listen to a song where the bassline comes in partway through the song and ask them to raise their hand when they hear the bassline come in (depending on the song it's often important to clarify that we're not listening for the chords/ harmony played by the guitar/ keyboard/ etc, but specifically the bassline- usually the electric bass). I've used different examples for this over the years, but the one I used last year and this year is The Scientist by Coldplay. 

Once they've practiced identifying the bassline and hearing the difference it makes when the bass comes in, we listen to September by Earth Wind and Fire with the bass part removed and then the original with bass, and we have a discussion about the role of the bassline in music in general. I sometimes show excerpts from this video to help concisely explain the importance of the bassline in music.

Then it's time to try playing a bassline! First we start with an easy chord progression where they can just play the root of the chord- you can actually use any ukulele/ guitar chord play-along for this, and just tell students to read the letter name at the beginning of the chord and ignore the little m's, 7's etc, but this year I used a guitar tab play-along video for Beat It by Michael Jackson. I usually do this with boomwhackers and use octavator caps to get the lower octave, but if your students are familiar enough with the keys, keyboards/ pianos would be a good way to have everyone play the whole bassline.

Once they try an easy one we talk a little about how most of the cool and interesting basslines don't just play one note for each measure- they do interesting things that make it an actual bass LINE! Then we try playing a basic walking bass line on boomwhackers with this play-along video, which is much more challenging but still attainable.

I also have students explore the many different instruments that perform the basslines in different genres by showing them some short video clips of live performances in different styles and asking them to identify who was performing the bass. I start this lesson by showing them my favorite electric bass solo of all time- Amazing Grace by Victor Wooten- and discuss basic and extended playing techniques they observe for the electric bass. After that I use different examples depending on the year, but this year since I taught these lessons during Hispanic Heritage Month I included this example of Five Beat Mambo by Tito Puente (this was the first one I showed them- it should be pretty easy to pick out the bass player since the rest are percussion!), and this performance of La Cigarra performed by Mariachi Flor de Toloache. I always include a singing example as well- a looped video like many creators post on social media is great because many of my students are familiar with the style of video and you can hear each part individually, like this one of the Grace Kelly trend from a few years ago.

The last part of these lessons, which actually comes up several weeks after the rest of the lesson activities, is creating their own basslines. After studying bass we move on first to learning about chords, and learn how to play some basic chords on ukulele, and then students create a chord progression to play on the ukulele. Then we come back to the idea of basslines by identifying the chord tones for each chord and using those chord tones to create and notate in bass clef a bassline. I have students put the notes they choose into Song Maker in Chrome Music Lab so they can add a percussion part and adjust the speed to play their chords along with the bassline/ percussion! I have all of the worksheets, teaching visuals, and lesson plans for this whole chord composition project in this set if you want to try this with your students.

I hope this gives you some fresh ideas to use with your older elementary and middle school students to learn about basslines! I think it's so important to contextualize anything students are learning, so if you teach bass clef, I highly recommend adding some or all of these lesson activities to the same grade's curriculum so they can understand the purpose of the lower register notes in different musical styles. You can find all of the lesson plans and materials for these lessons included in the 6th grade Organized Chaos curriculum as well!

Read more "Lesson Activities for Teaching Basslines"