"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!

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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!

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Sports in the Music Room

For some reason sports and music are often treated like opposites- people assume you're either athletic or artsy- but we all know that's not true! Helping to counteract stereotypes and give all students a sense of musical identity and belonging in the music room by incorporating other parts of their identities and interests into what we do is such an important part of an elementary music teacher's job. One way to do that is by incorporating sports themes into our lesson content so that students who are interested in sports have more opportunities to connect. Here are some of my favorite ways to do that with different specific sports.

I've written separate blog posts for each specific sport linked below, so click on each image to read those posts and get tons of different simple, concrete ways to incorporate that sport into whatever you're teaching at any elementary grade level. I will definitely be adding more to this list so stay tuned and I'll update this page as more posts are added!

What other ways have you incorporated sports into your music lessons? Are there other specific sports your students are into that you need help coming up with lesson ideas for? Leave your questions and ideas in the comments below!

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Basketball Themed Elementary Music Lessons

One of the most popular sports with my students is basketball. I love having different lesson activities prepared that address different skills and concepts I'm teaching with themes that will get students hooked, so today I'm sharing a collection of lesson ideas that tie into the theme of basketball. This would be perfect to incorporate during basketball season, especially March Madness, but really they are a great way to make a lesson more fun any time of year!

1. Space Jam

Maybe I'm showing my age here but when I think of basketball music I think of Space Jam. The theme song from the original movie Space Jam is a great track for having students practice steady beat movements- have students take turns choosing a basketball move to do on the beat for everyone to copy! It's also a good tempo for reading and performing basic rhythms- write a few measures of rhythms they're learning on the board and have them practice playing them on instruments with the track. For shorter note durations like sixteenth notes, We Win from Space Jam 2 has a slower tempo that works well for the same activity.

Another track from Space Jam 2 that I love using in my lessons is Crowd Go Crazy- this is another one that can work well if you need something with a slower tempo, but I especially like it as an example of high do. The main line in the chorus has a very clear octave jump that repeats multiple times so it's a great one to have students sing and identify the note.

2. Basketball Percussion Composition

While we're on the topic of basketball-related movie soundtracks, the beginning of the music video for Get'cha Head in the Game from High School Musical is a great, quick example of using basketballs as percussion instruments to perform rhythm patterns. Another great example I love showing my students is this video the Harlem Globetrotters did with STOMP. After showing them an example or two to get the idea, have students create their own rhythm composition just using basketballs! You can use this lesson activity to incorporate a variety of different concepts students may be working on by giving them specific parameters for the composition, whether that's telling them to include ostinati, specific rhythms, or even specific expressive elements like dynamics or tempi, and it's a great way to have students practice notating those by having them find simplified ways to record their compositions.

3. Basketball Routines

I'm sure many of you have seen the basketball routines and play-along's before, but this is an easy activity to throw in to get students moving, practice rhythms, get them to internalize the pulse, and give students some ideas of moves they can do before having them do a composition activity like described above. This play-along with Ho Hey is a clear, easy one to start with, this one with Natural includes whole notes and half rests with some more different kinds of moves, and other routines like this one for In the Wild are a good way to review note names and durations with more advanced routines for older students. There are plenty of other videos like these to use for this!

4. March Madness-Style Song Bracket

For March Madness specifically, my absolute favorite idea is to do a bracket of songs. Because March Madness happens during  Music In Our Schools Month®, I love to do a bracket based around the NAfME theme for MIOSM that year, and I have students vote in their homerooms every day for the whole month of March. You can see all of the brackets I've done over the years in this post, and see how I run it in this post. I love doing this each year because it introduces students to a wide range of songs including songs from different genres and time periods, in different languages, and from different cultures.

I hope this gives you some fresh ideas for incorporating a basketball theme into your elementary music lessons for all different grades, no matter what you may be teaching! It's fun to tie in different student interests to get students excited and help everyone feel like their personality and interests are recognized and included. If you're looking for more sports related lesson ideas, I've also written posts on incorporating baseball, American football, soccer, and ice skating! What other sports do your students get excited about? What other sports themed lesson ideas have your students loved? I'd love to hear your ideas in the comments.

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