Lesson Warmups to Practice Listening / Responding

I've been using student-led warmups at the beginning of my elementary general music lessons for years now and I am a big fan! I've gotten a lot of questions about the warmups I do and how I do them, so today I'm sharing my favorite warmups to practice listening to and responding to music.

In this post I'm focusing on warmups that help students practice listening to and responding to music in different ways. Most of my warmups are focused on practicing/ reviewing a basic skill or concept I want my students to practice regularly. Including these warmups gives me a chance to introduce students to musical genres, artists, and styles I may not be able to incorporate into my lessons as often, and gives students a chance to practice and review music vocabulary.

You can read more about why I do student-led warmups and how I manage the logistics of warmups in general in this post, but essentially I have a small group of 2-4 students who are assigned to lead the warmup / opening activity / do now at the beginning of class. The idea is to keep it quick, easy, and low-pressure so everyone can be successful right from the beginning of the lesson.

1. Pick a song

I have a few slides premade with lots of tracks embedded in them, grouped in different ways- sometimes I intentionally have a wide range of all different tracks, and sometimes I have tracks that all represent one specific musical element, genre, or theme. Student leaders pick a track, we listen to a snippet of the track, and then I ask the class a question about it: identifying a musical element, asking them what characteristics of the focus genre they hear, etc.

2. Pick a question

This warm-up is similar to the previous one but in reverse. I have a song (usually a video recording of a performance) picked out, and each warmup leader chooses one element that the class will identify in the song (dynamics / tempo / timbres / mood / genre / etc). 

3. Be the DJ

For this one, rather than the class describing the music, the class responds to the music with movement. Each warmup leader chooses a track and the class "shows the music" with movement. This is when I tend to pull out the biggest variety of tracks for leaders to choose from so that it's easier for them to differentiate their movements.

4. Pick a prompt

This warmup gets students to use and think about musical vocabulary while also building conversational skills through circle discussion. I give the warmup leaders a category (instruments, musical genres, etc) and each leader chooses 2 things from that category. We go around the circle passing a talking piece (whoever is holding it is the only one that can talk) and each person chooses which one they would pick out of those two choices (like "trumpet or clarinet" or "hip-hop or K-pop").

5. Movement mirror

This warmup is similar to the steady beat warmups I shared in a previous post except the movements are slow and fluid and have no beat. I turn on some soft, ambient music (like you would hear in a spa) and have each leader take turns doing slow movements at the front of the room while the class mirrors their movements. The goal is for the leader to move slowly enough for the class to mirror their movements without having to wait to see it first.

There are so many fun ways to put students in charge and practice listening and responding to music, and they are so much fun! These only take about 3 minutes at the beginning of class and they are so easy. You can find my post on warmup activities for steady beat in here, my post on activities for rhythm here, my post on activities for solfege/ pitch here, and my post on activities for pitch letter names here. If you have any questions or more ideas please leave them in the comments!

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Lesson Warmups to Practice Solfege/ Pitch

I've been using student-led warmups at the beginning of my elementary general music lessons for years now and I am a big fan! I've gotten a lot of questions about the warmups I do and how I do them, so today I'm sharing my favorite warmups to practice solfege and pitch concepts.

In this post I'm focusing on general pitch concepts and solfege practice, not note letter names. If you want ideas for practicing treble and bass clef (or any clef, really) letter names, I've already written a post on that here! Most of my warmups are focused on practicing/ reviewing a basic skill or concept I want my students to practice regularly. Solfege has always been one of the areas my students have struggled with the most, so it's an important one for them to review often.

You can read more about why I do student-led warmups and how I manage the logistics of warmups in general in this post, but essentially I have a small group of 2-4 students who are assigned to lead the warmup / opening activity / do now at the beginning of class. The idea is to keep it quick, easy, and low-pressure so everyone can be successful right from the beginning of the lesson.

1. Draw the line

There are several easy ways to get students to do some quick vocal exploration- for this one, I have the warmup leaders each take a turn drawing a line on a whiteboard, and then the class sings the line as I (or the student leader) point. It's a great way to get kids connecting abstract visuals with music, and picturing melodic lines in a way that eventually can translate to the staff.

2. Show the line

The second vocal exploration warmup is similar to the first but instead of actually drawing a line with a marker, the leader "draws" the line in the air with their finger for the class to follow.

3. Solfege pointer

I've experimented with lots of different ways to make it easy for students to lead solfege warmups and this one is by far the most successful: I have noteheads showing each of the solfege notes they know on the staff (color coded like our classroom instruments to help differentiate) on the board. The leader points to different notes and the class sings the note while doing the hand sign.

4. Solfege pattern selection

For this warmup, I put several short solfege patterns on the board and number them. Each warmup leader chooses a pattern for the class to sing on solfege with hand signs. Sometimes I write the names of the notes (like "mi sol la"), sometimes I draw noteheads on the staff, and sometimes I just draw noteheads with the color coding and note names underneath, depending on what they've been doing in class. It's a great way to get the class sight-reading at a basic level without being too intimidating.

5. Solfege composition

I only use this one with my older students, 4th-6th grade, because it puts a lot more pressure on the warmup leaders: I have a "bank" of solfege notes at the bottom of the screen, showing where they go on the staff, and each leader takes turns notating a short pattern using those notes for the class to sing. 

There are so many fun ways to put students in charge and practice solfege and pitch! These only take about 3 minutes at the beginning of class and they really help keep a skill that really needs to be "drilled" regularly feel less like a chore. You can find my post on warmup activities for steady beat in here, my post on activities for rhythm here, and my post on activities for pitch letter names here. I'll share more warmups for other skills and concepts in a future post- if you have any questions or more ideas please leave them in the comments!

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3 Ways to Foster Teacher Agency

I've been thinking and writing a lot lately about fostering agency in our schools- I think in this phase of post-pandemic that we're in right now, it's the #1 thing that people need, and finding ways to foster it will help address a lot of the biggest crises we're facing in education today. I've been focusing on ways teachers can foster agency for our students first, but today I want to talk about ways school systems and administrators can foster agency for teachers. 

First I think it's important for me to explain my positionality in this conversation- I am on a full-time teacher contract but I am also what my district calls a department chair. That means 40% of my work load is administrative. I teach 60% of a normal full time teaching load. So I have my feet in both spaces, I have, I think, pretty good insight into both perspectives, and I certainly am on both "teams"- I am not here to villainize one side or another. 

I've been writing about agency over a series of posts (links to those at the end of this post for more in-depth discussion of the overall issue), but I think this definition is worth re-sharing:

"The send of agency refers to the subjective feeling of controlling one's own actions, and through them, external events." (source)

So agency is control. And I think one of the biggest reasons for the teacher shortage- one of the biggest problems we're facing in education today- is the loss of autonomy, or sense of control teachers feel they have over what happens in their classrooms. Teachers feel like they can't teach the way they want because the volatile behaviors they see in their classes prevents them from doing so. They feel constrained by the ever-present fear that something they do or say could be taken out of context and get them fired and/or publicly shamed. They feel misunderstood and mistrusted by society because the "bad apples" in the profession who do in fact do or say shameful things are the ones that are constantly in the news. They're forbidden from using the materials they want or bringing up the topics they want students to discuss and consider because of misguided and oppressive laws and bans. Just like we have a responsibility to foster agency for our students, we also have a responsibility to foster agency for teachers.

And just like the conversation around student agency, the topic of fostering teacher agency is obviously complex, multi-faceted, and not something I (or anyone else) have a complete answer for. But here are some things I believe school systems, policy makers, and school administrators can do this year- within the confines of the systemic issues that exist- to foster teacher agency.  

1. Hold teachers accountable for the end result, not the process

One of the best ways to foster teacher agency is to hold teachers accountable for the end result but be open to teachers having different ways to get there. Instead of "everyone must use this lesson activity to introduce fractions", let's try "we want all students to understand fractions at this specific level/ meet this criteria on this rubric by this time- here are a few tested and proven lesson plans that are effective for helping students learn this effectively, let us know if you have another idea that you think is equally effective and we'll talk". 

There are definitely areas where we want common language to ensure the most effective implementation, or common experiences we want to ensure all students have across the school or district, and we most definitely want to ensure all students have the best opportunity to be successful. But that doesn't always mean there is one most effective way to do something that will be the best way for every teacher, every student, every classroom situation (actually it rarely does). 

2. Create opportunities for discovery

In my experience the best way to get teacher buy-in on a new strategy, program, etc is to provide ways for them to experience / see it working (and maybe discover other strategies, programs etc that get to the same goal... going back to my first point). Give teachers time to go watch other teachers teach, talk to each other to get ideas of what's working and ask questions to figure out why something might be working for other teachers and not for them. Give teachers the tools and materials, and give them the opportunity to learn how to use them effectively from other teachers who are doing it well. 

This also goes back to my first point in the sense that teachers are more likely to buy into an effective strategy or program if they discover that it's better than what they're current doing (or not doing) on their own. That can come from seeing another teacher using it and seeing the results, or it can come from a conversation asking teachers questions that encourage them to reflect on whether what they are doing is getting those end results we want. School leaders can walk teachers through the thought process that leads them to discover new ideas, or how to effectively use them, or question what they are doing in ways that hadn't occurred to them before.

3. Maintain advisory groups

It is understandably difficult to find good ways to have teachers be meaningfully involved in policy decision-making processes, curriculum assessment, and other processes that teachers need to feel they have more say in to create a sense of agency in the workings of the school and district, because teachers are tired and overworked, and it's simultaneously very difficult to get teacher coverage. But it's important to find ways to have teachers involved in important conversations! The truth is most of the people in administration, boards of education, and other school leadership right now did not teach during the pandemic. As much as good leaders will listen and seek to understand, they will never be able to completely take on that perspective, and that perspective of pandemic teaching is a lens through which all school decisions must be viewed to be effective in today's classrooms.

Rather than pulling teachers out of the classroom to meet during the school day, or inviting teachers to attend meetings or do other work outside of contractual time and hoping they will give up personal time because they care, my best suggestion is to "flip" staff meetings the way we've all heard people talking about "flipping the classroom". Put all the announcements, information, and materials in an email, cloud storage, etc and use staff meeting time to get teachers involved in focus group conversations. 

I could write an entire sermon about each of these points, but I'll save those for future posts another time. For now I'll put the question to everyone reading this: what are your suggestions for fostering teacher agency? I'd love to hear your answers in the comments. And if you're just tuning into this discussion of agency, here is my introductory post on the need for agency for both students and teachers, my post on fostering student ownership, and my post on empowering students.

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Lesson Warmups to Practice Rhythm

I've been using student-led warmups at the beginning of my elementary general music lessons for years now and I am a big fan! I've gotten a lot of questions about the warmups I do and how I do them, so today I'm sharing my favorite warmups to practice rhythms.

You can read more about why I do student-led warmups and how I manage the logistics of warmups in general in this post, but essentially I have a small group of 2-4 students who are assigned to lead the warmup / opening activity / do now at the beginning of class. These warmups are super easy to implement and a great way to review rhythms in a different, fresh way without taking a lot of class time.

1. Note name identification

This is an easy one to use that I pull out every now and then to review the names of different note values (quarter note, whole note, etc). I find most of our time in actual lessons is spent on being able to use the rhythms- read, write, perform, and identify them- so I don't reinforce the names of the notes that often. This is a quick and easy way to review them in a low-pressure way.

To set this up, I have a slide with all of the different rhythms they know in scattered formation on the board. The warmup leader points to a note, and students identify the name of the note.

2. Rhythm identification variations

Besides naming the notes, I also use the same idea in a few other ways: 

a. students say how many beats the selected note gets

b. students demonstrate how to clap and count the selected note, assuming it starts on beat 1

3. Rhythm selection

This one is also very simple: I have a slide with several lines of rhythms on it. The leader chooses a line, and the class claps and counts whichever line they picked. Often I'll turn on a track and have the class clap and say the rhythm with the beat of the track, just to make it more interesting (and contextualize the reading practice a little more).

4. Rhythm composition

I used to try to do this in slides, with images of notes students would drag and drop to create a 4-beat rhythm for the class to copy. You can certainly do it that way, especially if you have a good quality interactive board that makes it easy and intuitive for students to drag notes around, but I found the technology aspect got in the way of the thinking aspect since I don't have a good interactive board. Instead I have a bunch of cards with different rhythms on them (here is the post with pictures and explanation of how I made them) and I have the warmup leaders choose cards to create a 4-beat rhythm and put it up on the board with magnets for the class to read.

5. Rhythm play along's

There are so many great rhythm play along videos out there, it's impossible to use them all! For this warmup I will make a slide with 4 different rhythm play along videos on it and have the warmup leaders choose one (in this case, rather than having each student in the warmup leader group have a turn, I have them choose one together- we don't have time to do 3 or 4 different play alongs!). They can get a sense of the theme of the play along from the thumbnails so it's a fun way to give them some ownership and choice.

6. Rhythm randomizer

This idea was sent to me by a reader (thank you Kate!) and it's perfect for any grade level: set up the parameters on Rhythm Randomizer so it will focus on the rhythms they're practicing, and have the warmup leaders click "new rhythm" to generate a pattern using those elements for the class to count/ clap/ play.

There are so many fun ways to put students in charge and practice rhythms! These only take about 3 minutes at the beginning of class and they really help keep a skill that really needs to be "drilled" regularly feel less like a chore. You can find my post on warmup activities for steady beat in here, and my post on activities for pitch letter names here. I'll share more warmups for other skills and concepts in a future post- if you have any questions or more ideas please leave them in the comments!

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