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Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Favorite Lessons for Teaching Dotted Quarter / Single Eighth Notes

The last couple of years I have finally found some successful lesson plans for introducing and practicing dotted quarter - single eighth note rhythms I like using with my 6th graders. This is a pretty advanced rhythm pattern and it has taken me a long time to find lesson activities that help students successfully read and perform the rhythm while also having fun! Here is the lesson I use to introduce this rhythm pattern to my 6th graders in the fall that helps them be successful with it the rest of the school year.


By the time I introduce dotted quarter and single eighth notes in 6th grade, they already know quarter notes, eighth notes, the single eighth- quarter- eighth "syncopa" pattern, and dotted half notes, so they have all the building blocks to understand the concept. But I've found it's still quite challenging to get students to really be fluent with the rhythm and be able to decode it from notation as well.

The biggest key to success has been finding a song that gets students to feel the beat while performing and hearing the rhythm pattern over and over, and for that I have found "AcitrĂ³n de un Fandango" (aka
"Al Citron") to be the key to success. If you haven't heard of this Mexican passing game song, you can read more about the song, including the various versions of the lyrics and translations, here. This is a clear recording by native speakers (although honestly I don't play any recordings with my 6th graders because they're more likely to roll their eyes if I do). The basic idea is to pass something around the circle on the beat until you get to the last 3 beats of the verse, where you tap back and forth before passing- here's a video showing the game:


As with most singing games with upper elementary/ middle school grades, I start by challenging them with the game first before I have them sing. First I have them practice passing bean bags or rhythm sticks around the circle on the beat while I sing. Once they can do that and they've heard the song a few times, I tell them to tap back and forth on "triqui triqui tran", and continue to have them focus on just passing. Once they can do that, we go back and I up the ante by telling them they have to be able to sing while doing the passing (this way they are less focused on being self conscious about singing and more focused on showing off that they can beat the challenge)- I teach them the song and then we add it back to the game. Obviously once they can do that then we repeat it and try to increase the speed, then we make it a game where if you mess up, you sit out, and the circle gets smaller until there are only 2 students left standing!

As a sidenote: I finally this school year figured out how to make this game, and all the other passing games I've used in the past, successful again after finding them frustratingly difficult post-pandemic. I wrote an entire post about my process here but basically I found that having them practice the passing game in smaller groups first and then gradually making the circles bigger works. Now I am enjoying teaching passing games like this one again! 

Once they have sung the song many times and felt the beat with it in their bodies, I ask students to tell me how many beats the word "un" is in the first line where we sing "un fandango". I have them pat the beat while I slowly sing it so they can see where the notes fall with the beat, and eventually they figure out that it is 1.5 beats long. Then I introduce the dotted quarter note, reminding them what they learned about how dotted notes work when they learned dotted half notes in 4th grade. From there it's an easy final step to figure out how many beats the next syllable is and recall the single eighth note they learned in 5th grade with the "syncopa" pattern.

Once they've been introduced to the notation and they've thought through how many beats each note is in the melody, I have half of the class pat the beat while the sing, while the other half of the class claps the rhythm while they sing. Once they can do that, we remove the singing so they are just clapping and patting. 

Over the next few lessons we practice the rhythm and notation more with other songs and with rhythm play-alongs that include the new rhythm. My favorite videos to use for this are:

Of course there are lots of other great songs with dotted quarter/ single eighth notes that we use to practice them throughout the year, but this is definitely my favorite song to use to introduce them and it has finally helped my students be successful with the new rhythm! What is your favorite song for introducing this tricky rhythm pattern? I'd love to hear more of your favorites in the comments below. And if you want to see my favorite lessons for teaching other specific rhythmic elements, you'll find them all in this post:


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Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Teaching Passing Games

Has anyone else found passing games harder and harder to teach the last 5 years or so? I don't remember it being this difficult for students to grasp when I started teaching, but the last several years it has been a struggle for my students to successfully do passing games and honestly, most of the time I've ended up having to move on without the class ever fully being able to do it correctly, which just leaves us all frustrated. This school year after talking to some of my elementary music colleagues I tried a new strategy to scaffold my instruction for passing games and it has been highly successful! I'm so relieved to have a way to make passing games fun and successful again. 

I have always loved including passing games as part of my elementary music lessons (I have a few of my favorites at the end of this post if you're interested). They are a great way to reinforce steady beat and meter, get older kids to sing while they're distracted with a different challenge, and foster teamwork. But the last several years I went from looking forward to teaching them to dreading them because every time it seemed like the lessons would end in frustration! My colleagues and I were commiserating about this back in the fall and together we came up with an idea to help students be more successful, and it has turned out to be genius.

I still start teaching passing games by showing them the movements/ song with all the students facing me and mirroring my movements. It's important for them to practice doing the movements and the song without the added confusion of having the people you're facing across the circle doing it "backwards", or the risk of the people next to you doing it wrong and messing you up!

The next step has been the key to my students' success: instead of moving to a circle with the full class to learn how to do it as a passing game, I have them get into small groups of 3-4 students (in my case, my color teams) and practice doing it in a tiny circle with just their small group. I am able to walk around and correct students without trying to correct the whole class at once, and once students in a group can all get it they can play without having to wait for the whole class to figure it out. 

I tell students when they start that they get to "level up" whenever they complete a level. Leveling up is just adding another group to theirs! So when I see 2 small groups are successfully doing the passing game, I tell one group to join the other to make a larger circle and try again. Adding the level of competition is definitely motivating for everyone, and the students who struggle are a lot less embarrassed and catch on more quickly because they don't have the entire class yelling at them for messing them up.

Because I can identify the students that are struggling more easily in small groups, I can not only help them more easily without correcting them in front of the whole class, but I can also strategically place myself next to them when they level up to the full class circle. I also have found the stronger students will do the same thing and intentionally put themselves next to the ones who are always late to pass etc to help keep them on the beat.

This has been a complete game-changer and I'm so happy to bring the fun back to our passing games again! If you haven't done them before I highly recommend giving some of these a try with your upper elementary students- because they reinforce steady beat they are a great way to experience new meters and rhythms or just add some interest to a song you want them to sing.

Escatumbararibe

Bhombela

Al Citron

Take Five

I've done plenty of others but those are some of my top favorites! If you want to see the full lesson plans for these, you can find them in the Organized Chaos General Music Curriculum. If you have other favorite passing games, or teaching hacks that have helped your students learn them, please leave them in the comments!

Tuesday, May 6, 2025

Dance Playlist 2025

I love finding upbeat, school-appropriate, modern songs to use in my music classes for dance parties, slideshows, field day, and general merriment, and these last few years it has felt especially important to share with all the stress and negativity we're all dealing with. Here are my new picks for this year- be sure to check out my posts from previous years to find more awesome music my students and I love linked at the end of this post! 



This year, along with other random songs I've picked up this year, I've also included some songs from the 2025 MIOSM® song bracket because my students young and older can't seem to get enough of them! Don't miss the playlist at the end of this post that includes these songs plus all of my picks from previous years' playlists (this is year 10 of me putting these together, so there are a lot)! Can you believe this is our 10 year anniversary of the Organized Chaos Dance Playlist?!?

 









To make it easier to find all my dance party playlist songs in one place, I've put together a YouTube playlist with all of the songs from all of my previous year's lists including this one! Here's the link to the playlist.

Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Teaching Sonata Form

I love teaching form. I didn't think much of it at the beginning of my teaching career, but it has become one of my favorite areas to explore with students because there are so many opportunities for creativity, and it's one of the easiest places to incorporate almost any genre of music. Today I want to share some of my favorite 5th grade lessons on Sonata form.


I actually introduce Sonata form with the song, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow". This video actually shows each of the sections on the screen which is very helpful. Afterwards we review the order of the sections they saw/ heard, and I introduce the term Sonata. I like showing them a more modern example first so they immediately understand how this form has been used in so many different genres! Once they know what Sonata form is, I show them the very beginning of this visualization of Beethoven's Piano Sonata 29. My 5th graders learn basic piano, so they get excited to see a "legit piano song". Once we listen to the first part of it I pause the video and have them look at the colored sections to see the big picture and identify the Sonata form visually (if I had more class time we would listen to the whole thing- I usually post the link in Google Classroom so they can watch the rest later on their own!). 

Once they have heard a few different examples and identified what Sonata form is, I ask students to identify the sections aurally in "Blackbird" by the Beatles. Again, I like showing students examples of how the form is used in different genres in different time periods! I have them identify the sections as they hear them by showing them the sign language sign for A and B and have them hold up their hand with the corresponding letter when they hear each section.

Once students have identified the form, I show them how the beginning of the melody in Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" is actually a mini Sonata in terms of phrase structure. I make sure to clarify that form does not really refer to phrases, and explain that we are simply using the shorter phrases to be like "sections" as a way to practice playing a Sonata in shortened form. They learn how to play the first 2 phrases on the piano, then they use the same 5 notes to create a B section phrase, which the notate in treble clef, and then perform it as a "mini Sonata".

It always surprises my students to find out how prevalent Sonata form is in different genres, and they love being able to "remix" Ode to Joy to play on piano! What lesson activities do you use to teach Sonata form? I'd love to hear your ideas in the comments. You can get all of the detailed lesson plans, materials, and slides for these lessons in the Organized Chaos 5th grade curriculum! And if you want to see my general strategies and lesson ideas for teaching form, as well as my lesson plans for teaching other specific forms including theme and variations, rondo form, etc, head to this blog post.