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.
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